Once upon a time, in the heart of a bustling city, nestled in the charming embrace of a Victorian park, there was a peaceful haven – a place where rustling leaves serenaded wandering souls seeking solace, where the timeless beauty of nature met with the human desire for connection.
This picturesque sanctuary has been meticulously cared for by Albert Fairchild, a custodian whose unwavering determination to preserve this gem shines through with every stroke of the rake and every empty trash can. His love for this sanctuary was palpable as he roamed the park making sure every flower, every tree, and every bench was cared for and kept to perfection.
He was passionate about his work. Every day he walked around the park, raking the walks, emptying the trash cans, and making sure everything was in its place. City gardeners came twice a week to take care of the trees, plants, and grass.
Albert noticed a young child coloring a picture book while she sat quietly at one of the picnic tables in the park one day. By all accounts, she was no older than four or five years old, but she was alone! Albert looked around, but her parents were nowhere to be seen. There must be a problem.
Albert approached the young girl and greeted her. “Hello, young lady. How come you are here alone? Are you chasing fairies?”
The young girl looked up at Albert. “You are a stranger and I am not to talk to strangers,” she replied.
“No, you’re not,” Albert agreed. But as you can see, I’m not asking you to accompany me somewhere or give you sweets. I just want to know why you’re alone and where your mom is.”
“I’m waiting for Mom,” said the young one. “She asked me to wait here for her because she had a job interview across the street.
He’ll be back soon; I have my juice and a snack.”
Nothing is insurmountable, so never give up until you reach your goals.
Albert frowned. While he understood that single mothers with no family and no money sometimes had to make the best decisions they could, it wasn’t exactly safe to leave a child in a public park, especially when this mother appeared to be unemployed and in dire need.
“What’s your name miss?” Albert asked.
The lady laughed. Margaret was her name, she claimed.
Albert shouted, “That’s a HUGE name!”
“He’s three times your size!”
“My mom calls me Meg,” she laughed and said. “And I don’t believe in fairies!”
Albert clutched his chest with a cry. He laughed and said, “I’m in shock, little Miss Meg!” “I think fairies exist. I actually see them quite often! They insisted on showering and breaking rainbows, so I had to chase them out of the fountains.”
Meg was beaming. She laughed and said, “That’s a LIE!” “It is bad!”
“Okay,” Albert commented. Although I have a lot of work ahead of me, rest assured that I’ll be watching over you to make sure the fairies don’t rip out your braids. Meg, just give me a shout and I’ll come running when you need me.
Albert turned to leave, but only took one last look behind him. He knew it wasn’t but he wanted a young granddaughter or someone like Meg in his life.
The tiny girl reminded him of his own granddaughter and the terrible event that ended his life, so much so that he had to stop working and grieve in private.
Albert was a policeman who, five years ago, loved his job head over heels. He was a devoted father, a loving and kind husband, and a charming grandfather at home.
Albert remembered that fateful day and said, “But if it hadn’t been for that day…”
That Sunday in May was quite pleasant.
Albert’s family was heading to a nearby town for a long-awaited ideal holiday by the sea. He went on vacation for a week to spend time with his loved ones. Albert could still picture his granddaughter Emily running inside to fetch Chelsea, her teddy bear.
He thought, “How happy she was that morning!” He never saw her again and her laugh still worried him.
Joshua, his son-in-law, tried to get Albert to give up his seat behind the wheel, but he refused. Albert wanted to drive.
Dad, it’s your day! Driving will be my responsibility. He advised Albert, who did not get out of his minivan, “You need to relax and enjoy this trip.”
If it weren’t for the unexpected call from the station, Albert might never have moved out.
“I’m headed there,” he said. “I’ve got to go. I’ve been given a vital clue for further research. You men are starting to move. ‘I’ll make it up to you tomorrow night,’ he declared to his family. Everyone, especially tiny Emily, was disappointed. She wanted to play games and sing songs with Albert.
“Grandpa’s coming tomorrow, darling. It’s only a day.”
As the minivan drove past the gate, Albert and Emily blew countless kisses in the air. Albert immediately left for work, and just as he was about to return home in the evening, he received a call from the city station.
An hour later, he was taken to the mortuary of the city hospital. His heart sank as Emily’s stretcher was the last of the four to be wheeled out. A vehicle accident devastated his entire world.
The officers patted him on the shoulder and explained, “The minivan lost control and hit the truck.”
Albert lost his family in the blink of an eye and there was no going back. End with a laugh. No more trips abroad. ‘Grandfather! I’m home!’ it won’t be heard as loud anymore either.
Albert could not forgive himself. It was my duty to drive that minivan. He sobbed a million times and thought, “I shouldn’t have let Josh drive. But nothing has changed.”
“I should have canceled the trip, Jose. He sobbed to his best friend during the funeral, placing Chelsea, Emily’s teddy bear, on her grave. “I should never have let them go,” he said.
Months, weeks, and even five years passed. These questions still troubled Albert, but they did not trouble him. He was aware that his family was lost for good. It was a harsh truth that he came to terms with over time: they weren’t going to come back.
Work focused on Albert was impossible. His beloved police work constantly reminded him of a painful past. He gave up and took care of the park. All he wanted was to avoid any situation that would remind him of the loss.
Albert wiped the tears from his eyes when a gust of wind brought him back to reality. He looked around at the tiny child, his watery eyes hurt by the fading light. He asked, “Where is she?”, realizing that Meg was nowhere to be found.
Albert hurried to look for the girl in the park. However, she was not present. He speculated, “Maybe her mother took her.” After rummaging through the yard, Albert returned home, convinced that Meg had left.
But when he returned to the park the next morning, he saw Meg there once more—sitting in the same chair, wearing the same shirt, clutching her stuffed animal. Albert was taken aback.
“Hello, Darling!” He greeted the girl.
“What are you doing here so early?”
She said with disappointment, “Mommy didn’t come.” “She never came for me.
“What? So where did you go last night? And where did you rest?”
Meg replied, “Home,” her tearful face lying on the plush. She didn’t look up at Albert. She didn’t want to talk to him at all and kept checking to see if her mother had come to get her up.
“What happened to her mother?” Albert thought.
“Hello, I used to be a police officer. Okay, you can trust me.” he declared. “I’m afraid your mother is lost in this sprawling metropolis. Could you show me your house? Okay, we’ll find your mother.”
But Meg didn’t want to move. Her strong conviction that her mother would come for her did not allow her to move from that spot.
“Listen, Meg, I understand you’re scared. Like I said, there’s nothing to be scared of. Okay, you can trust me. What’s your mother’s name?”
Meg struggled to pronounce her mother’s last name when she told Albert. Albert knew he couldn’t look for her mother without knowing her last name, so he asked Meg to repeat the word several times. To search everywhere, including Internet databases, he requested her full name.
Albert figured Meg’s mother’s last name might be ‘D’Cruz, after hearing it a few times.
from the parking lot. “This is where I call home,” she said.
“Listen, we have to visit your residence. Would you like to see your mother?”
Meg said, “Yes, I want to see my mom,” and finally turned to Albert.
“Then take me to your house.
Shortly after, Meg took Albert to a makeshift tent under an abandoned bridge nearby
Albert had a vague idea that Meg and her mother were tramps. Inspecting the little-used canvas tent, he found it contained an old mattress and a camping stove with a pot that smelled like stale mush. Meg’s old clothes were in the tent, but there were no pictures or photos. He originally believed that Meg’s mother might have abandoned her. Still, something seemed off about him.
He asked the girl, “How long have you lived here?”
“A couple of weeks,” Meg replied. “We had a big house. But my mother was being shouted at by big, angry guys in uniform for refusing to give money. My mother was sobbing and so was I. My mother took me here when they threw away our things.”
After searching the tent once more, Albert didn’t seem to uncover anything that would lead him to Meg’s mother. “Do you have a picture of your mother?”
“No, I had one, but it’s with mom!”
Albert did not know how to proceed. Before he could think of anything else, Meg asked him to take her back to the park. I can’t leave that girl alone, he thought to himself.
“Mommy ordered me to stay put and wait. If she comes, she’ll scold me. Take me to the park, please.”
Albert nodded, unsure of what to do. He took Meg back to the park with him and placed her on a bench. Albert offered Meg his lunch knowing she would be starving all night.
“Mommy told me not to eat from strangers,” Meg refused, but the smell of pie in Albert’s snack was too strong for her nose and sight to ignore.
“That tastes really good, huh?
Delicious. Albert took a ladle and ate it in front of Meg. If you wish, I will consume it in its entirety. I can eat an entire cake in two minutes. Are you sure you don’t want that?
Meg took the box and began to devour the pie. Meg waited for her mother and Albert continued to work, happy that his trick had worked.
After several hours it was getting dark, but her mother had not arrived. Meg began to cry and Albert’s heart would not let him leave her.
Do you want to walk me home? “Okay Meg, we’ll go back tomorrow and wait for your mother.
Meg accepted and escorted Albert home. Yes, Margaret is the only name I know for her. I don’t know anything about her mother though. Could you please inform me? “She mentioned that her mother was tall, had blonde hair, and was probably between 24 and 25 years old,” Albert told his former colleagues in the division.
Meg had vague descriptions of her mother’s features and struggled to spell her name correctly. Still, Albert was unable to make a definitive statement. Using Meg’s confused spelling, he put the first and last names together, though he wasn’t sure it was correct.
“When is mom coming?” Alberta asked Meg.
“My dear, he will be here shortly. Proceed to the room and change into new clothes. There are plenty of clothes in the small closet. I will begin to prepare dinner.”
Meg had trouble spelling her mother’s name correctly and could only describe the vague characteristics of her mother. But Albert could not make a firm judgment. He made up the first and last name from Meg’s confused spelling, but he wasn’t sure if it was correct.
“When is mom coming?” Meg invited Albert to come inside.
“Honey, he’ll be here soon. Go to the room to get dressed again. The little closet is full of clothes. I’ll start preparing dinner.”
Meg returned a few minutes later, dressed in Emily’s pajamas. As Albert scrambled eggs and giggled to an old record on the record player, she raced past him. Albert never felt lonely for the first time at the age of five.
Meg slept all night in Emily’s room while Albert talked on the phone. He was busy working with his friends to find her mother, determined to do so at any cost.
“No, mate,” came the late-night call from the officer. “We even looked into cases of young ladies killed who had surnames and descriptions that matched, but we found no leads. There have been no documented cases recently.”
With a sigh, Albert assured Meg that her mother was still alive. He noticed Meg curled up on Emily’s bed fast asleep as she turned off the lights in her room.
Albert stayed up late collecting phone numbers of city hospitals. As the morning light brushed his tired eyes, he woke up suddenly. Tired, he fell asleep in the chair.
“Oh my God, Meg?” He thought she had gone to the park alone while he was sleeping, so he ran to see how she was doing. Noticing that she was still sound asleep, he said, “Jesus, thank God!”
Then Albert called every hospital in town to ask about Meg’s mother. He even tried to contact a friend who worked at the morgue but to no avail. The woman matching his description and last name was unknown.
Albert did not know how to proceed. It is rare for the police to make a concerted effort to find a woman who is homeless. Besides, she probably won’t see her mother again if I have to put her in foster care,” he reasoned. Then Albert realized that finding Meg’s mother himself was the only safe method to support her. His thirty years of police experience had not been in vain.
Albert took Meg to the park every day and sat her in the same position her mother had left her. While searching for the missing woman, he asked his friends to keep an eye on her. Albert took a few days off because he realized that he couldn’t do all this at work.
At first, he started going to all the homeless shelters in the city and the surrounding villages. He asked almost everyone he came across.
He asked if Meg’s mother happened to be attending any interviews by calling every office that had a “Hiring” sign. Although he checked several known sanctuaries, he found nothing. Candy D’Cruz, a female name, has never been seen.
Albert even looked through social media and showed Meg pictures of a number of ladies with names that were close to her, but none of them were her mother. He looked at every street and traffic camera around the park to no avail.
After a month, Albert had almost given up trying to find Meg’s mother. All his efforts were in vain. However, Meg never gave up and went to the park every day just to wait for her mother from sunrise to sunset.
“If I’m not there, how will mom find me?” she often argued with Albert. One morning it started to rain as they headed to the park.
“I’ll take you to the park tomorrow, honey. Meg was stubborn despite Albert’s warning that she would have a cold.”
“No, we’ll head over there and wait. Mom’s coming,” she said.
Albert couldn’t convince her. They couldn’t walk in the rain, so they took a bus to the park. There were several stations on the longer journey. And Meg started screaming as she crossed one of these stations.
“There she is! Mommy’s there!”
Albert was taken aback. He stood up from his chair and asked, “Where??” Although he assumed she had mistaken someone else for her mother, she persistently asked the driver to stop the bus.
After hurriedly helping Meg off the bus, Albert hastily turned to face the woman he saw. He asked her, “Where is she?”
Meg pulled his arm to the billboard on the sidewalk, pointed, and called out, “There, that’s my mom!”
“Where? Which one is it?” Albert asked.
Second from the left is the place. She is my mother. She really is my mother.”
The text of the billboard read, “Do you know me?” next to her name, the words “Cadence Delacruz, please call this number.” He gasped in horror when he realized Meg’s mother’s name was Cadence, not Candy.
“What is written there?” Meg interrupted her.
He told her, “It’s an ad for lost people.”
“What’s it about? What does it mean?”
“That means we’ll find your mother!!” Albert called the number displayed on the billboard and happily carried Meg.
“The city hospital,” the orderly answered. “Yes, she was accepted here.
They were informed that Meg’s mother had already left the hospital when they arrived. “Mum disappeared? How far did she go? Meg cried.”
Albert held her close and said, “Honey, hold on…Just a second.”
“What brought her here?” “What happened to her?” he asked his sister.
She was brought in more than a month ago with a serious head injury. The nurse reported that the patient experienced amnesia as a result of a traumatic brain injury.
“Where is she now? Albert said, ‘We would like to see her.’
“She needed expensive medical attention. After several weeks in a coma, she woke up with no memory of anyone. No one came to take her. We even posted her picture and name on social media, but no one responded.”
She was released from treatment last week and placed in a homeless shelter.’
Albert feared that Meg would experience another loss of her mother. The girl and he then hurried to the shelter.
Meg looked for her mother and held Albert’s little finger. Then she bolted for the bed in the corner, running as fast as her short legs would allow.
She screamed, “MOMMY!!” and hurried to her mother.
“Mom, where did you leave me and go?” Cadence recognized Meg as her daughter the moment she saw her and heard her call her mom because she had a photo of them together.
With a sob, “Honey, I’m not sure”
Smiling and crying with her mother, Meg left Albert stunned and moved. “You have to accompany me,” he cut you off.
“Where? Besides, who are you?” Requested cadence.
“My name is Albert. I work as a park ranger. I found your daughter,” he said, pausing. I will explain everything later. I have to take you and Meg home now.”
After driving Cadence home, Albert invited her to stay at his house as long as she wanted. He paid for her treatment from all his savings. Cadence had to wait several months before she was able to remember several significant life events.
She benefited greatly from having her daughter around. Cadence started to remember and Albert wondered how she got hurt.
She said, “My husband mortgaged our house.” “He died in an accident and I wasn’t able to pay the money. After our house was stolen, my daughter and I rented a modest room. The landlord evicted us because we didn’t pay the rent, and I lost my job.” .”
Cadence wasn’t able to get a job nearly as quickly after he was homeless. They camped briefly in a canvas tent under a bridge because she didn’t want her daughter living in a homeless shelter.
Albert sighed with happiness that Cadence and Meg had a happy ending and felt sorry for her. He asked her, “But how did you get hurt?”
Cadence sobbed as she remembered that horrible day.
“I had a job interview. I decided it would be risky to leave my child alone in a tent, so I dropped her off at the park. Cadence revealed, “I told her to wait there until I came.
“I remember slipping and falling in the subway. I blacked out when my head hit the edge of the stairs. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. I couldn’t remember anything.”
“I’m glad you’re safe, my love. And I’m so glad Meg found you. She really missed you,” Albert sobbed.
Until Cadence found employment, she and her daughter lived with Albert. A few months later she dated and eventually married Frank, a widower with two children.
After moving into their new home, Cadence and Meg always appreciated Albert’s help. Although he knew he would miss Meg immensely, he was excited about them.
Meg and her mother have not forgotten Albert even after all this time. They joined his family, spending non-stop weekends with him and even going on summer vacations to the seaside together.
What lessons can we learn from this story?
Nothing is insurmountable, so never give up until you reach your goals. Albert didn’t give up on his search for Meg’s mother, even though he had little or no leads. He eventually reunited the mother and the missing young girl.
Sorrow cannot be removed by love; only light can drive out darkness. After the accident that claimed his family, Albert was inconsolable. Until he ran into little Meg in the park, his life was bleak and empty.
Albert, Meg, and Cadence’s story certainly embodies the deep essence of resilience and the limitless capacity of human connection to heal the deepest wounds. It is a testament to the enduring strength found in hope, determination, and unwavering kindness.
Albert’s unwavering determination to find Meg’s mother, his selfless commitment, and the unexpected bond he formed with Meg lit up the corridors of his heart and filled them with newfound warmth. Through this connection, he discovered a renewed purpose that gradually stitched together the torn fragments of his once bleak life.
Their story exemplifies the profound impact of human connection and the transformative power of compassion. In the face of immense tragedy and loss, she reminds us that even the smallest acts of kindness can create deep bonds, creating waves of healing and hope that transcend the darkest of times.
It is a testament to resilience – how even the most challenging circumstances can be resolved through persistence, empathy, and a willingness to go the extra mile. It is a reminder to hold on to hope, to persevere in our pursuits, and to embrace unexpected connections that have the power to breathe new life into our souls.
Albert, Meg, and Cadence’s intertwined journey speaks to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring influence of love and empathy. It’s a story that reflects the sentiment that kindness, hope, and a willingness to lend a helping hand can ultimately pave the way to healing, restoration, and the brightest future.