I never expected a small seventh-grade bracelet to follow me into adulthood, but life has a way of looping the past back into the present. When my family moved away, I left him that braided string — our little secret, my silent goodbye. I always assumed it disappeared into childhood the way most things do. But years later, standing in a café back in my hometown, his wife looked at me with recognition sharp enough to steal my breath. “You’re the one who left him that bracelet, aren’t you?” she asked. The world seemed to tilt as I nodded, stunned that she even knew about it.
Continues…
