The station suddenly felt silent.
The young woman frowned.
“What?”
With shaking hands, the old man pulled out an old photograph.
The corners were worn and faded from time.
He turned it around.
The young woman’s smile disappeared.
It was a picture of a little girl.
Holding a red balloon.
Standing beside a younger version of the old man.
Her eyes widened.
“No way…”
The old man looked at her, unable to hold back tears anymore.
“Twenty years ago,” he said softly, “I lost my daughter in a crowded train station.”
The young woman’s hands began shaking.
She looked back at the picture.
Then at him.
Then back again.
The red balloon.
The tiny birthmark near the eye.
Everything matched.
“I never stopped looking for you,” he whispered.
The young woman covered her mouth.
Because the stranger she had just helped…
was her father.
