My husband received a Christmas gift from his first love — and as he opened it in front of us, he said, “I have to go,” tears filling his eyes.

It was a small box.

I was sorting the mail at the kitchen counter when I noticed it. “Hey,” I called out, “something came for you.”

Greg was by the fireplace adjusting the garland. He walked over slowly and took the box—and then stopped. His thumb traced the handwriting as if it carried a message only he could hear. Then he said a single word, and it drained the air from the room.

“Callie.”

That name—I hadn’t heard it in more than a decade.

“Callie.”

Greg had mentioned her once, years ago. Early in our relationship, one summer night while we lay on the grass, he told me about his college girlfriend. His first love.

The one who made him believe in forever—and then shattered that belief.

He said she ended things after graduation, without ever really explaining why. It broke him, he admitted. But meeting me, he said, showed him what real love truly was.

He’d stopped speaking to her in his early twenties and never brought her up again.

His first love.

“Why would she send something now?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked to the tree and slid the box underneath it, as if it were just another present waiting for Christmas morning. But it wasn’t. I felt it instantly—the shift, the subtle crack in the space between us.

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