At that exact moment, my stomach dropped.
“Yesterday?” the woman repeated, her voice cracking. “But Julia died six years ago… in a car accident not far from here.”
I stood frozen on the doorstep, blinking, trying to make sense of what I’d just heard. “I—I think you must be mistaken,” I stammered. “She was at a party. We met. Talked all night. She told me about her job, her family, her favorite songs… we came back to my place. I swear, she was real.”
The woman’s eyes welled up with tears. “What did she look like?” she asked slowly.
I described Julia — the way her laughter lit up the room, the tiny crescent-shaped scar near her left eyebrow, the silver earrings she left behind. The older woman brought a shaking hand to her mouth and stepped aside without saying a word. I hesitated, then followed her into the house.
She led me to a dusty cabinet in the hallway. From a box labeled “Julia,” she pulled out a photo — and my breath caught. It was her. The same woman I’d met just days ago. Only this photo looked aged. A timestamp on the back read 2019.
“She was my daughter,” the woman whispered. “Those earrings… they were the last pair I gave her before she passed. We buried her with them.”
I opened my palm again. The earrings were still there — cool to the touch, heavier now, like they carried a weight beyond the physical. The woman and I just stared at them for a long time, neither of us speaking.
Eventually, I left, my mind spiraling with questions and disbelief. Was it a ghost? A dream? Some cosmic glitch in time? I didn’t know. But that night, as I tried to sleep, strange things began to happen.
The lights flickered. My phone glitched, and Julia’s name popped up on my screen — though I never saved her contact. A familiar scent — lavender and vanilla, the same she wore — filled the room.
Then came the whisper. Faint, right beside my ear:
“Thank you for remembering me.”
I turned on every light in the apartment. But nothing was there — except the earrings, placed gently on the nightstand where I was sure I had locked them away.
To this day, I don’t have an explanation. I never saw her again. But every year, on the anniversary of the party, I find those earrings back on my table… and the scent of lavender fills the air once more.