Dima didn’t expect to grow attached. At first, it had been a strange favor—pretending to be someone else, playing the role of a grandson to soothe an old woman’s final days. But over the course of a week, something shifted. Their conversations became real. Lidiya Semyonovna stopped being just another patient and became something else entirely—familiar, comforting… and strangely connected.
One quiet afternoon, while adjusting the old knitted shawl over her shoulders, she asked softly, “Would you mind looking through my photo album with me, Dimochka? I want to remember things… together.”
He nodded, gently accepting the leather-bound album from the nightstand. Its pages were filled with black-and-white photos, grainy portraits, and sun-bleached snapshots from decades ago. Lidiya pointed with a trembling finger at each one, offering short, vivid stories—her youth, her husband, her daughter…
And then Dima froze.
A photo, curled at the edges, showed a younger woman smiling shyly at the camera. She was maybe twenty. Her hair was the same chestnut brown as his mother’s. Her eyes, unmistakable. Her name was scrawled on the back in neat cursive: Irina Semyonovna, my little firecracker — 1988.
Dima blinked. That was his mother’s name. The same face. The same year she would’ve been twenty.
“Who… who is this?” he asked, trying to keep his voice calm.
Lidiya smiled wistfully. “My daughter. Irina. She ran away when she was young. Married a man I didn’t approve of. I never saw her again. But I still keep her photo. I wonder sometimes where she is. If she ever had children. If she remembers me.”
Dima couldn’t breathe. The pieces clicked too loudly to ignore.
He was not pretending to be her grandson.
He was her grandson.
His throat tightened. The deception hadn’t been a lie at all—it had been fate. A twist of destiny that brought him to a grandmother he never knew. His mother had never spoken of her family. She always changed the subject or said they were “all gone long ago.”
Now he knew the truth.
“Lidiya Semyonovna…” he began, voice cracking. “I have to tell you something.”
But she waved her hand gently, eyes still locked on the photograph. “No need, my dear. I already knew.”
Dima’s heart skipped. “You… knew?”