That night, after blowing out the candles, Laura kissed Mom and smiled.
“I’m going outside for some fresh air,” she said. “Save me another slice of cake!”
Then she walked out.
She never came back.
There was no note.
No suitcase.
No phone call.
And most importantly, there was no sunflower sweater.
For years, Mom searched for her.
She contacted everyone she could think of. She kept photographs of Laura everywhere and refused to believe that her daughter was simply gone.
Dad was different.
He stopped searching within months.
Eventually, Laura’s photographs were boxed away.
Her name became something we weren’t supposed to mention.
I used to believe grief had made Dad cold.
But after all those years, I began to wonder whether there had been something else he had never told us.
Then Sophie pointed at the sunflower on the old sweater.
“Dolly said you should check inside.”
I carefully turned the sweater inside out.
There, hidden beneath the large sunflower, was something I had never seen before.
A tiny wooden charm.
