Sixteen years ago I found a stranger’s baby in a car trunk — I never imagined she’d been left there for me.

I was single, tattooed, and usually covered in grease. Everyone thought I’d lost my mind when I applied to adopt her.

“A guy like you raising a little girl?” one coworker laughed. “Good luck.”

I named her Lori.

And somehow, we figured it out together.

I learned to warm bottles between shifts, braid hair from YouTube videos, and sit through tea parties with a plastic crown balanced on my head. I took every extra job I could so