Before Nana vanished, mornings in our house were loud and sticky and alive. She’d turn her music up too high, sing into a spatula, flip pancakes like she was auditioning for a cooking show. Syrup would trail across the counter, and I’d pretend to scold her while secretly wishing the moment would never end.

It’s been ten years since our last Sunday together.

Ten years of setting an extra plate anyway.

Ten years of scraping it clean, untouched.

And ten years of hearing the same sentence from everyone who loves me:

“You have to move on, Natalie.”

But I never did. I couldn’t. A mother doesn’t fold up her hope and put it in a drawer.

That morning at the flea market, I wasn’t looking for anything. I just needed noise. The chatter, the clinking of old dishes, the shuffle of strangers — it softened the silence that waits for me at home.

I was halfway down a row of worn paperbacks and cracked vinyl records when I saw it.

At first, I told myself I was imagining things.

But there it was.

“For Nana, from Mom and Dad.”

The world tilted.

I leaned across the folding table. “Where did you get this? Who sold it to you?”

The man behind the table barely looked up from his crossword puzzle.

Curly hair.

My mouth went dry.

“But no more questions,” he added. “Two hundred dollars. Take it or leave it.”

I paid without blinking.

When I got home, Felix was in the kitchen, pouring coffee into the chipped mug we’d owned since the year Nana was born. He didn’t turn around when I walked in.

“You were gone a while, Natalie.”

I held the bracelet out to him. “Look at this.”

He turned slowly. His eyes dropped to the gold band in my palm. His jaw tightened.

“At the flea market. A woman sold it this morning. Tall. Curly hair.”

“You bought it?”

“Felix, it’s hers. Look at the engraving.”

He stepped back like it burned him.

“Good lord, Natalie.”

“It was on her wrist the day she left.”

“You don’t know that.”