For several weeks, my daughter Ellie had been coming home with free ice cream from a man I had never met.
At first, I thought nothing of it.
Maybe he was simply being kind to a child. Maybe he had extra ice cream at the end of the day. Whatever the reason, I didn’t think there was anything unusual about it.
Then one afternoon, Ellie said something that made me stop in my tracks.
“He says strawberry was your favorite too.”
My heart skipped.
Strawberry shortcake had been my favorite ice cream when I was a little girl.
But I had never told Ellie that.
I immediately warned her about accepting things from strangers. Then, as a mother, curiosity got the better of me.
Who was this man?
And how could he possibly know something about my childhood?
A few days later, the ice cream truck returned.
This time, I followed Ellie outside.
Behind the counter stood an older man with gray hair and glasses. He looked completely ordinary—until he saw me.
His smile suddenly disappeared.
He stared at me for several seconds.
Then he quietly said my first name.
“Sarah?”
I froze.
Nobody had called me that way in years.
I asked him how he knew who I was.
Instead of answering, he reached beneath the counter and pulled out something that made the world around me seem to disappear.
It was an old photograph.
I took it from his hands.
And there I was.
A little girl standing beside an ice cream truck, holding a strawberry shortcake bar.
But I wasn’t alone.
There was a young man standing beside me.
I stared at the photograph, trying to remember.
Then the name came back.
“Ben?” I whispered.
Ben had been my older brother Adam’s best friend.
Adam was ten years older than me.
He had been one of the most important people in my childhood.
And then, when I was only nine years old, everything changed.
Adam died in a car accident.
After his death, my family moved away, and as the years passed, I stopped talking about those painful memories.
I thought I had forgotten most of that part of my life.
But Ben hadn’t.
And then he showed me something written on the back of the photograph.
Five simple words.
Five words my mother had written years ago.
THE STORY CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE… 👇👇👇
