The traffic light had just turned green when a little boy began pounding on my car window. He couldn’t have been older than five. Dust covered his face, tears streaked his cheeks, and he held a small red toy truck tightly against his chest.

“Sir, please! Something’s wrong with my mom!”

Cars behind me started honking. I lowered the window.

“Where is she?”

He pointed toward a narrow street behind us. “Over there. She won’t wake up.”

I switched on my hazard lights and got out.

That morning, I had chosen to drive myself. At thirty-six, I ran several real estate and hotel businesses in Manhattan, and I’d wanted a few hours away from meetings and phone calls. Now none of those things mattered.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Leo.”

“Show me where she is, Leo.”

He ran ahead, leading me into a passage between two old buildings. A woman lay beside the wall, partly covered by a worn blanket. Leo dropped to his knees next to her.

“Mom, I brought someone.”

She was breathing, but she barely responded when we spoke to her. I called emergency services, gave them our location, and followed the dispatcher’s instructions. Leo slipped his hand into hers.

“Is she going to wake up?” he asked.

“Help is coming,” I said. “Stay close to me.”

A breeze moved the hair away from the woman’s face. I saw a tiny scar beside her eyebrow and froze.

I knew that scar.

A rainy evening came back to me: an almost empty train station, a young woman fighting tears, and a promise we had made before going our separate ways. I hadn’t seen her in years.

“Do you know my mom?” Leo asked.

“I’m not sure yet.”

The woman stirred. Her eyes opened slowly, then settled on me.

“Ethan?”

My heart began to race. I hadn’t told her my name.

“How did you recognize me?” I asked.

“Ethan, please…”

Sirens sounded in the distance. As I turned toward them, I noticed the toy truck still pressed against Leo’s chest. Its red paint was worn, and one wheel was black while the other three were not.

I had owned a truck exactly like it as a child. When one of its wheels broke, my father replaced it with a black wheel from another toy.

“Leo, where did you get that truck?”

“My mom gave it to me. I’ve always had it.”

I looked at her. Tears filled her eyes.

“That used to be mine,” I said.

The paramedics arrived before she could answer. I stepped aside while they examined her and prepared to take her to the hospital. Then another memory surfaced. I was nineteen when I gave her that truck at the train station. It had been a clumsy way of asking her not to forget me.

I moved closer to the stretcher.

“Why did you give it to Leo?”

She looked at the boy. “Because it’s part of his story, too.”

I couldn’t make sense of that. Leo was five; far more than five years had passed since I’d last seen her. I wasn’t going to guess what she meant from a few words and an old toy.

“What story?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you when I can. Not here.”

The paramedics helped Leo into the ambulance with his mother. Just before the doors closed, he held up his truck.

“Mr. Ethan? When Mom gets better, do you want to see my other cars?”

“I’d like that,” I told him.

I watched the ambulance drive away. My phone kept vibrating with work calls and messages, but I didn’t look at it.

That morning, a little boy had knocked on my window and led me to a woman I never expected to see again. She still had a piece of my childhood, and she knew something about Leo that she wasn’t ready to tell me.

When she recovered, I would listen to the whole story.