The sun was just starting to dip when we left the old boutique for the last time.

We did not say much. The door clicked shut behind us, and the key in my hand felt heavier than it ever had before. I looked at the windows one final time. Inside, the lights were off, the forms neatly covered, the silence purposeful. It did not feel like abandonment. It felt like gratitude. The kind that comes when something sacred has been lived in fully, then gently released.

We had outgrown it, not because it ...