A small, trembling shift. A sound so soft it might have been swallowed entirely if not for the way it cut through everything else—a thin, fragile cry.
He stopped.
The bike wobbled as he planted his feet on the ground, his breath catching in his throat. He stared at the basket, afraid to touch it, as if it might vanish or accuse him of something he didn’t understand.
Carefully, he leaned forward and peeled back the soaked cloth covering the bundle.
And there I was.
A baby, no more than a few days old, wrapped in a threadbare blanket that had long since given up any attempt to stay dry. My face was scrunched, my tiny fists clenched, my cries weak but insistent.
“I remember thinking,” he would say, his voice softer here, “that you looked angry. Like you had already decided the world owed you an explanation.”
He looked around again, more urgently this time. The street was still empty. The rain showed no sign of stopping. Whoever had left me was gone.
For a moment, he hesitated.
Not because he didn’t want me—but because he didn’t know how to want something so sudden, so enormous.
He was twenty-two years old, with a future that had just barely begun to take shape. He had plans. Small, careful plans that didn’t leave room for surprises, let alone a child.
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