He never saw anyone else. No one ever came looking for the man and the woman. Or the child. And he never saw the man and woman again. Later, much later when the boy was grown, Giovanni would tell the boy that the woman—his mother—hadn’t wanted to leave him. “She will come back,” Giovanni would tell him. “One day, when all is well, she will return.” Until then, he had desired a child, and now here one was. Oh, how fortuitous! How wonderful! Giovanni took his time in deciding a designation for the baby. It was when the leaves were changing from green to red and gold that he found the perfect
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