The Sunday walks between my son, Mark, and me had become our sacred ritual—a necessary anchor in the two years since my wife passed away. Mark is a gentle child, perhaps too attuned to the world’s sharpness, and our time together by the lake was the only hour each week where the silence between us felt peaceful rather than heavy with grief. On one such afternoon, under a pale, washed-out sky, Mark stopped abruptly and reached into the tall weeds. He pulled out a filthy, one-eyed teddy bear, half-buried in the mud and matted with grime. It was a wretched...
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