My name is Elena. When I was eight, I promised my little sister I’d find her. Then I spent 32 years failing.
Mia and I grew up in an orphanage with no parents and no history — just each other. She followed me everywhere. We only dreamed of leaving together.
Then a couple came to adopt. They wanted one child. I was taken.
Mia screamed and begged me not to go as workers pulled her off me. I promised I’d come back for her. That promise haunted me for decades.
As an adult, I searched. The orphanage told me she’d been adopted, renamed, and her file sealed. Every attempt ended the same way. I built a life — work, marriage, divorce — but I never stopped thinking about her.
Last year, on a business trip, I went to a grocery store after work. In the cookie aisle, I noticed a little girl wearing a red-and-blue braided bracelet.
I froze.
I’d made that bracelet when I was eight — one for me, one for Mia. Same colors. Same crooked knot.
The girl told me her mom had given it to her and said it was very special. She pointed down the aisle to her mother.
When the woman walked over, my chest tightened. Her face, her eyes — it was Mia, grown.
I asked where she got the bracelet. She said a sister gave it to her in a children’s home.
Her sister’s name was Elena.
We stood there in shock, then sat in the store café and filled in 32 missing years. We’d both searched. We’d both thought the other had forgotten.
She’d kept the bracelet all these years. When her daughter turned eight, she passed it on.
Before we left, Mia looked at me and said, “You kept your promise.”
We didn’t pretend the lost years didn’t matter. We started small — calls, texts, visits.
After 32 years apart, we’re slowly stitching our lives back together.