The scissors slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the floor. She stared at my reflection like she was seeing a ghost. I laughed nervously and asked how old her sister had been. She swallowed and said the age matched mine exactly. Same year. Same hospital. Then she whispered something that made my chest tighten: “They never found her body.” The salon felt suddenly too quiet. As she slowly turned my chair to face her, she asked one final question— “Do you know who brought you home from the hospital?”

The sound was sharp, metallic, far too loud for the quiet hum of hair dryers and low conversation. I caught her reflection in the mirror—her face drained of color, eyes locked on mine like she was staring at something impossible.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, laughing nervously. “Guess I startled you.”

She didn’t smile.

To fill the silence, I gestured vaguely at the photos taped along her mirror—family pictures, kids at different ages. “Your sister,” I said lightly. “How old was she there?”

Her throat worked as she swallowed.

“She would’ve been your age,” she said.

I frowned. “Would’ve?”

“Same year,” she added slowly. “Same hospital.”

Something cold slid down my spine.

I tried to keep it casual. “That’s… kind of a coincidence.”

She leaned closer to the mirror, her voice dropping. “They never found her body.”

The salon felt suddenly too quiet. The hair dryer behind me shut off. Someone laughed at the front desk, the sound distant and wrong, like it belonged to another room entirely.

I watched her hands shake as she reached for my chair.

And then she turned me to face her.

Up close, her eyes searched my face with an intensity that made me want to look away.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” I replied, my heart pounding. “It’s fine. I just… didn’t expect that.”

She nodded, but she didn’t move back to the counter. Instead, she glanced around the salon, then leaned in again.

“My sister disappeared from the maternity ward,” she said. “They told my parents it was a stillbirth. But there were problems with the paperwork. Times that didn’t match. Nurses who couldn’t remember who was on shift.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. My palms were damp.

“She had a birthmark,” the stylist continued. “On her shoulder. Small. Crescent-shaped.”

My breath caught.

I had one too.

I’d never thought much of it. Just one of those things you’re born with.

Her eyes flicked to my shoulder, still covered by the cape. She didn’t ask to see it.

Instead, she asked quietly, “Do you know who brought you home from the hospital?”

The question landed like a weight.

I shook my head. “My parents,” I said automatically. Then hesitated. “I mean… I think so.”

She didn’t look satisfied.

I left the salon with uneven hair and a mind that wouldn’t slow down.

That night, I called my mother. Asked questions I’d never asked before. About the hospital. About the delivery. About who’d been there.

Her answers were too quick. Too rehearsed.

“You were exhausted,” she said. “You don’t remember everything clearly.”

I hung up and stared at my reflection, pulling my shirt slightly aside. The birthmark stared back at me, familiar and suddenly foreign.

I don’t know yet what the truth is.

I don’t know if that woman’s sister is me—or if coincidence is just cruel sometimes.

But I know this: questions don’t appear out of nowhere. And people don’t look at strangers like ghosts unless something unresolved is standing between them.

The salon felt quiet because something old had surfaced.

And the most unsettling part wasn’t the possibility that I was someone else’s missing child.

It was realizing how little I actually knew about the day my life supposedly began.

Because once someone asks you who brought you home from the hospital—

You can’t unknow how important the answer might be.