Everything Seemed Normal Raising Triplets – Until One of the Children Started Saying the Unexplainable

Everything seemed normal raising our tripletsuntil one of them started saying things no seven-year-old should know.

We brought up our boys the same way, but one day, one of them began speaking of things that left us stunned.

From the start, people joked wed never tell them apart. So we gave them bow tiesnavy, crimson, and teal. Three identical lads with matching scuffed knees, their own secret language, and the odd habit of finishing each others sentences. It was like raising one soul split across three bodies.

Then Elithe one in tealstarted waking in tears. Not from nightmares. From what he called *memories.*

Dyou remember the old house with the red door? he asked one morning.
We didnt. Ours had never had one.

Why dont we see Mrs. Langley anymore? She always gave me mint humbugs.
We knew no one by that name.

Then came the night he whispered, I miss Dads green Buickthe one with the dented bumper.
Wed never owned a Buick.

At first, we laughed it off as childs fancy. But Elis tone wasnt playful. He spoke with quiet certainty, as if recalling his own past.

Soon, he started drawing. Page after page of the same placea house with a red door, tulips in the garden, ivy climbing the chimney. His brothers thought it well cool. Eli just looked sad, like hed lost something precious.

One day, rummaging through the garage, he asked for his old baseball mitt.
You dont play baseball, mate, I told him.
I did, he murmured. Before the fall. He touched the back of his head.

We took him to a doctor. The paediatrician referred us to a psychologist. Dr. Berger listened carefully and said Elis memories werent just imagination. Some call them past-life recollections, she explained. Controversial, yesbut real to him.

I didnt want to believe it. Then Dr. Lynn, a researcher, asked Eli during a video call:
What was your name before?
Danny, he said. Danny Kramer or maybe Cramer. Lived in Oxford. In a house with a red door.

He described falling off a ladder while taking down a flag. Head injury. Pain. Darkness.

Days later, Dr. Lynn called back. Shed found records: Daniel Cramer, Oxford. Died in 1987, aged seven. Skull fracture from a ladder fall.

The photo she sent near stopped my heart. The boy looked like Eli. Same cowlick. Same eyes.

After that, Eli seemed calmer, like hed closed a chapter. The drawings stopped. The odd memories faded. He went back to playing with his brothers, laughing as before.

Then a letter arrived. No return address. Inside: a photo of a red-doored house, tulips in the garden, ivy on the chimney. A shaky signature: *Thought youd like this.Mrs. Langley*

Wed never told anyone about Mrs. Langley. Only Eli. And Dr. Lynn, whod since vanished.

Years later, when Eli was fifteen, I found a shoebox under his bed. Inside: a single marble, blue with green swirls. At the bottom, a note in childish writing: *For Elifrom Danny. You found it.*

When I asked where it came from, he just smiled.
Some things dont need explaining, Dad.

I still dont know if I believe in past lives. But I believe in Eli. In the quiet wisdom he carries, deeper than his years, and the way he sometimes gazes at the skylike hes remembering something far away.

Children come with their own stories. Sometimes, those stories arent ours to understand. Just to hold.