Sara Michaels
“I need to find it.”
The words came out quicker than I intended, edged with a quiet urgency I couldn’t hide. My fingers curled instinctively around the empty space on my wrist, as if the bracelet might magically reappear if I tried hard enough.
Grandma Eleanor didn’t move immediately. She studied me, her gaze calm but observant, as if she could see past the surface of my reaction and into what I wasn’t saying.
“It must mean something to you,” she said gently.
I swallowed, nodding without hesitation. “It does.”
That wasn’t even the full truth.
It wasn’t just important.
It was… mine. One of the few things I carried that wasn’t tied to expectations, to pressure, to anyone else’s control. Something simple. Something grounding me to my own little world when I had nothing
