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She didn't know where she was, or how she'd come there.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the man who stood before her, his eyes alight with a yearning that matched her own.

"Victor! Oh, my darling, I've missed you so!" She tried to throw herself into his arms.

But instead, she encountered an invisible barrier. Like those "force fields" in science fiction movies.

Victor winced. "I'm sorry," he said gently. "I love you, want you, but we can't touch. Can't come any closer than this." He held up his hands, as if he were pressing his palms against a pane of glass.

Trembling, she followed suit. Placed her hands opposite his.

They made an awkward, "through-the-glass" attempt at a kiss.

Then she took a reluctant step backward, so she could see him better. Drink in the sight of him!

"All...all right." She was weeping now. But she pulled herself together, resolved not to waste a moment of this meeting, imperfect though it was.

Smiling through her tears, she said, "Victor...I'm so thankful to have our beautiful baby! I love him so! I wish I'd been able to bring him with me - not sure why I couldn't - so you could see him. But you probably know all about him.

"I asked you to help him, to protect him. And I'm sure you did - helped save his life! Todd did all he could, he was amazing, but I know he only succeeded because of you."

Victor wasn't smiling. "I couldn't help you, Tea. What do you think I am, some kind of archangel? I'm just a dead guy. Being dead doesn't give me any sort of 'powers.' I wish it did."

"I don't believe that. I know you've been watching over us and helping us."

He shook his head. "I couldn't help you then, Tea. But I want to help you now...if you'll let me."

"H-help me now? Of...of course..." She felt a stirring of unease. "B-but...I don't think I need help now, Victor! Except for our not having you, everything's going well for me and our son.

"I was afraid he might have hemophilia...I'm sorry I never mentioned that risk to you, but the truth is, neither of my pregnancies was planned. We could have coped with hemophilia. But fortunately, we won't have to. The baby lucked out and escaped it, just like my brother did. He does have another blood disorder, but it's much less serious. So our lives are just about perfect!"

"Think, Tea," Victor said quietly. "When the baby was born, you knew something was wrong. He didn't cry. And Todd didn't want you to look at him - probably because his color was so bad. He was probably blue."

"Yes, I know that." Though I don't like to remember it. "But the woman Todd met - she seems sort of crazy, but she really did breathe life back into the baby. When I took him from Todd outside that shack, he was fine!"

Victor nodded. "He may have been - or seemed - 'fine' then. But I just want you to remember there'd been a problem at the outset.

"Now, think about all the things that happened later.

"When you had time to look closely at him, you didn't think he resembles anyone in either of our families.

"A doctor told you he was underweight - said that's understandable when a baby comes early. But our baby was full-term! And the way you looked the last few weeks, you might have expected him to be above average size.

"Then he turned out not to have a blood disorder you'd thought he might have, but to have one that wasn't expected. More common with other ethnic backgrounds. And it's a condition your doctor - your very good doctor - should have detected before he was born.

"Don't you think all that, taken together...suggests something?"

Toward the end, every sentence he'd spoken had hit her like a hammer-blow.

"No..."

"Face it, Tea. At least put it into words."

"You think..." She swallowed hard.

She knew that if anyone but Victor had been prodding her, the words would never have come.

But now she got them out. "You think the baby I've been accepting as mine - ours - isn't really ours."

"I know he isn't. And deep down, you know that too. I only know what you know."

When she didn't respond, he said quietly, "Why haven't you looked around this room, Tea? The room you can see on my side of the barrier? You've never looked beyond my face...because you don't want to acknowledge what else is here.

"Who else is here."

She made herself look.

And moaned, as she saw the crib.

But then Victor reached into it...and held up the baby for her to see. A squirming, smiling - and, yes, drooling - baby, who looked right into her eyes, and greeted her with a happy gurgle.

"Ohhhh!" She was laughing and crying at the same time. She finally managed to say, "He's really all right? Safe with you?"

"Of course he is. And if we can't all be together, I'm grateful for your having given me this wonderful gift."

"B-but...what's going to happen now? Will you be able to raise him, somehow? Or will he be a baby forever?"

"I don't know. Like I said before, I only know what you know."

She forced herself to think again of the living world. The world that was "living" in the conventional sense.

"If there was a baby-switch, I can't imagine when it could have happened. Maybe at the hospital? When my baby was taken away from me to be examined...maybe, then, he actually died? And the nurse brought me a different baby?"

Victor looked blank. "Like I said, I only -"

"I get it. You only know what I know." And she was in the realm of pure speculation now. "Why would a nurse have done that? Is the baby I have a foundling, one who'd been abandoned at the hospital?

"Would it be best, in that case, if I just keep silent? Let it play out the way that nurse intended - with a child whose mother didn't want him being raised by someone who does, and never having to know his birth mother rejected him?"

Victor pursed his lips. "You don't know the baby was abandoned. If you tell the hospital what happened, and no one else claims him, you'll probably be allowed to keep him. And that way, you won't be left wondering whether you did the right thing."

She couldn't suppress the thought But what if someone does claim him?

Then Victor said, "You don't know what's become of our baby's body..."

She went rigid. "My God. How could I have forgotten that? I'm thinking of the real baby being with you, being happy...but I still need to have his physical body given a proper burial! Burial with you."

"Y-yes. My being able to keep him may even depend on that. I don't know. I only know what you know."

"Then I will investigate, get to the bottom of what happened. I promise. And, Victor, I want you to tell our son that no child I may adopt will ever replace him! He's irreplaceable...just like you!"

He gave a smug smile that was pure Victor. "Of course we're irreplaceable."

Laughing, weeping, feeling about to burst with love for the smiling man and drooling baby, she hurled herself against the barrier again...

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And found herself sitting up in bed.

Shaking, sobbing.

Oh...my...God.

She remembered every moment of the dream, every word they'd spoken.

And whether or not she'd really been with Victor, she finally knew - at the conscious level - what she'd known, subconsciously, all along.

The baby I brought home to Llanview isn't mine.