Every morning at exactly six o’clock, the elderly woman would shuffle out to the garbage bins behind the apartment building. Her thin fingers would carefully sift through the waste, examining each scrap as if searching for something precious. The neighbors whispered about her strange habit, some assuming she was collecting bottles for money, others convinced she’d lost her mind.
Little Katya watched this ritual from her third-floor window every day. The nine-year-old couldn’t understand why anyone would want to touch the smelly trash. One morning, gathering all her courage, she approached the woman. “Grandmother,” she asked softly, “what are you looking for?”
The old woman’s hands stilled momentarily before continuing their methodical search. “A baby,” she murmured, her voice barely audible. “I lost him here somewhere.” Katya’s blood ran cold as the woman lifted a dirty rag, examining it carefully before tossing it aside and moving to the next bag.
That evening, Katya’s mother turned ghostly pale upon hearing about the encounter. “Stay away from her,” she warned, her voice trembling. A week later, the neighborhood awoke to the sound of ambulance sirens. The old woman had died beside the garbage bins, her weathered hands still clutching a torn plastic bag.
It wasn’t until after her death that the truth emerged. The woman had been just fifteen when she secretly gave birth decades earlier. Terrified and alone, she’d disposed of the newborn in those very trash bins. For sixty-four years, she’d returned daily, searching for the child she’d been too frightened to keep.
