“Please, let a kind soul take care of this child. His name is Leo.”

That was my inheritance. A name, a bracelet, and a legacy of abandonment.

Old Jack had nothing. No home, no money, no kin. His legs were swollen with the miles he walked, and his lungs wheezed like a broken accordion. Yet, he possessed a heart that defied the cruelty of our existence. He took me in. He raised me on stale baguettes scavenged from the back of bakeries at dawn, on soup from charity kitchens that smelled of boiled cabbage and sanitizer, and on the few cents earned from returnable bottles.

“Listen to me, Leo,” Jack would say, sitting by a fire made of trash in a rusted barrel, the orange light dancing on his weathered face. “If you ever find her… if you ever find the woman who tied this red thread around you, you must forgive her.”