Except this morning, the bench wasn’t empty.

I noticed him peripherally at first. Just a splash of aggressive red in my gray visual field. I ran past, but something—a hitch in my legal brain that notices inconsistencies—made me slow down, stop, and look back.

A boy. He couldn’t have been more than three years old.

He sat motionless on the bench, his legs dangling a good six inches above the ground. He was wearing a red puffer jacket that was slightly too large, swallowing his small hands. His feet were encased in muddy sneakers that didn’t match—one featured Paw Patrol, the other was plain blue. In his lap, he clutched a stuffed rabbit that had clearly survived a war; the fabric was worn to the mesh, one ear hung by a thread, and the original white had faded to the color of dirty snow.