My husband, Elias, noticed the change in the atmosphere and seemed lighter too. He thought time was finally doing its work, and in a way, he was right.
By the time Maya’s senior year rolled around, we were a rhythm. I was the one who drove her to her SAT prep, and she was the one who taught me how to use social media filters. One afternoon, while we were cleaning out the attic for a garage sale, she found a box of her mother’s old college things.
She opened the box, expecting to find more trinkets, but it was mostly empty except for a few stray buttons. Then, her face went pale as she reached into the velvet lining of the small side compartment.
She pulled out a small, tarnished silver charm. It was a half-heart, exactly like the one she had given me a year earlier. My heart stopped as I looked from the charm in her hand to the one hidden beneath my collar.
Maya looked at me, her eyes wide with a mix of confusion and a sudden, sharp pain. “If this is here,” she whispered, “then what did I give you?” I reached under my shirt and pulled out the charm she’d handed me on that rainy night.
We held them side by side, and the realization hit us both at the same time. The charm Maya had been holding onto for two years—the one she thought was hers—actually matched the one in the box.
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