“Trafficker. Used kids to collect recyclables and beg. When they got sick or couldn’t work, she dumped them.” His jaw tightened. “We didn’t know. We gave them food and moved on. Three months later, we found him frozen under that same bridge. Dead maybe six hours. If we’d come earlier—”
He couldn’t finish.
“Serving twenty years. Doesn’t bring him back.”
I asked why they visit. Why maintain the grave of a child they barely knew.
Thomas looked at me with red-rimmed eyes.
“Because we found him. Because we were the last ones to see him alive and didn’t know he needed saving. Because showing up every year is our way of telling him he mattered. He wasn’t trash. He was a child. And somebody remembers.”
He showed me photos from every October 15th visit. They’d given Mikey a birthday since no one knew his real one. Calculated it backwards from the coroner’s age estimate.
“He would have been twelve this year. Probably into video games and sports. Normal kid stuff he never got to have.”
I sat with that for a long time.
For three days, I debated what to do with my footage. I’d gone looking for a scandal. Found something sacred instead.
The flowers. The toys. The cake. The seven men in leather crying over a forgotten boy.
I posted it with the caption: “I went to expose vandals. Found the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Twelve hours later: one million views.
Three days later: fifteen million.
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