When I was seven, a man in a black coat kept watching me on my walk home. One day I hid, and when he found me, I demanded to know why. He said I reminded him of his daughter, Renata, who had vanished years earlier. My brother pulled me away, and police never found him.
Months later, I saw him on TV: Carlos Vicente, homeless, grieving. Years passed, and as an adult working at a community center, I met him again—sober, volunteering, still carrying Renata’s memory.
Then came the miracle: Renata was found alive, taken years ago by her mother. Reunited, Carlos called it proof that kindness and patience matter. He died peacefully a few years later, leaving behind drawings of a girl with a backpack behind a bush.
What seemed like danger had really been a father searching for his lost child.
