Before we parted, Daniel placed a small object on the table: a locket I had lost when I was seventeen, one I thought was gone forever. He had kept it safe all these years, believing one day he would return it to me himself. He asked, carefully, whether we might see where life could take us now—not as teenagers chasing a dream, but as two people shaped by time and experience. I said yes. Not to the past, and not to a fairytale, but to a door I never expected to open again. And for the first time in decades, I felt something quiet and brave stir inside me—hope.
