At my old job, we had Secret Santa.
I didn’t know what to get, until I spotted a copy of Oliver Twist in a second-hand store—it just felt right. At the gift exchange, the woman I gave it to burst into tears.

The lady I had bought for was crying and hugged me. She said 10 years ago, her dad had given her that exact edition of the book before he passed. It had gone missing during a move years ago, and she’d never found another copy quite like it. She opened the cover and showed me the inside—it had a small tear on the first page, just like the one she’d lost.

“I think this might actually be the same copy,” she whispered, eyes wide. “This tear in the corner… the faint coffee stain on page 132… it’s too much to be a coincidence.”

Now, I’m not one to believe in fate or signs, but even I had to pause. What were the odds? I had no way of knowing her story. I just saw the book, and something told me it was the right gift. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe not.

Her name was Lorraine. She was quiet, always kind, but kept mostly to herself in the office. Worked in accounting, I think. The kind of person you nod to in the breakroom but never really talk to. After that moment, everything shifted. She’d bring me tea sometimes. Ask how my weekend went. We even started having lunch together every other Friday.

One afternoon, while we sat by the window eating turkey sandwiches, she opened up. Told me her dad used to read to her from Oliver Twist every night when she was a kid. She knew most of the lines by heart. After he died of pancreatic cancer, she kept the book like a relic—until a careless moving company misplaced the box it was in. She had tried for years to find another one that felt the same. “This one is the same,” she said again. “It has to be.”

I didn’t argue. It wasn’t about proving anything. It was enough to see how much it meant to her.

A few weeks later, she gave me a small envelope with a thank-you card and a photo inside. It was of her and her dad, sitting under a tree, the book between them. “So you know who you brought back to me,” she wrote. I kept that card in my desk drawer.

Then, about three months later, Lorraine didn’t show up for work.

No one said anything at first. People miss a day. Flu, a dentist appointment, whatever. But then it stretched into two days, then a week. I asked around. HR didn’t give any details—just said she was on an extended leave.

I texted her once. “Hey, just checking in. Hope you’re okay.”
No reply.

Life moved on, like it always does. Projects kept coming, deadlines didn’t care. A new guy took her desk. Loud, ate egg salad at 10 a.m., didn’t refill the printer paper. Different vibe altogether.

Still, I couldn’t forget Lorraine. I’d go to that second-hand bookstore sometimes, almost hoping I’d see her there, flipping through shelves.

Then in April—almost five months after the Secret Santa thing—I got a letter at work. Handwritten, with no return address. The handwriting looked familiar.

It was from Lorraine.

“Dear Callum,” it started. “I’m sorry I disappeared. That book reminded me of everything I had lost. And it cracked something open in me—something I’d been keeping shut for too long.”

She had taken a leave of absence to visit her childhood home in Norfolk. Said she hadn’t been back since her dad passed. She cleaned out the attic, found some of his old letters, and finally let herself grieve in a way she hadn’t allowed herself before.

“I never said thank you properly. You gave me something I didn’t even know I needed. You gave me a piece of my dad back.”

I sat at my desk, just staring at her words. People around me were talking about spreadsheets and coffee filters, and I felt like I was floating.

A few weeks later, she showed up again.

Not at work—she’d resigned. But she came by the office one afternoon and asked to see me. She looked… lighter. Not happy, exactly, but more at peace. She told me she’d enrolled in a literature program part-time. Said she wanted to teach one day.

“I’ve spent so long surrounded by numbers, I forgot how much I love stories,” she said.

We went out for coffee, and from there, it became a regular thing. Once every few weeks, then more. We’d swap book recommendations. Sometimes she’d bring her dad’s old copies of things and read passages aloud, especially the funny ones. I learned more about her life in those months than I had working beside her for years.

One night, as we walked past a bookstore that had a copy of David Copperfield in the window, she stopped and said, “You know what I realized? Maybe that book didn’t find me. Maybe it found you first, so you could get it back to me.”

I smiled. “Or maybe I just have excellent taste.”

She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

By then, we were more than friends.

It happened slowly, the way good things often do. No big, sweeping declarations. Just small moments that added up. A glance held a second too long. A hand that lingered. A joke that turned into a shared silence.

We didn’t call it anything for a while. But when I got a job offer in Manchester and told her I might be moving, she grabbed my hand and said, “Then I’m coming too.”

We moved into a flat together six months later.

Our place wasn’t fancy, but it had a reading nook by the window and shelves full of second-hand books. We still had that Oliver Twist copy, now framed in glass, mounted above the bookshelf. It wasn’t about the story anymore. It was about everything that came with it.

Last year, Lorraine started teaching at a local college. Intro to 19th Century Lit. She came home one day, tossed her bag down, and said, “Guess what book I assigned today?”

I didn’t even have to ask.

We got married in a small ceremony in Cornwall, just close friends, lots of tea, and a ridiculous cake shaped like a stack of books. The top layer was decorated like Oliver Twist. I nearly cried when I saw it, which she never lets me live down.

Now, before you start rolling your eyes and thinking this is all too neat, let me throw in a twist.

Six months after the wedding, Lorraine’s mom reached out for the first time in over a decade.

They hadn’t spoken since Lorraine left home at 18. It wasn’t a great relationship—her mom was strict, cold, thought books were a waste of time. But she’d heard about Lorraine through a cousin and wanted to talk.

Lorraine wasn’t sure. Said she didn’t owe her anything. But then she opened up a letter from her mom. Inside was a photo of Lorraine as a child, sitting on her dad’s lap, both reading—you guessed it—Oliver Twist. There was a short note.

“He loved that book so much. I didn’t understand it then. But I kept this photo because I always knew how much it meant to you. I’m sorry I tried to take that away.”

Lorraine called her. Slowly, they started rebuilding something. Not quite a mother-daughter bond, but something softer. Understanding, maybe.

Sometimes, things don’t come full circle. And sometimes, they do—but not in the way you expect. A ten-dollar book from a dusty shelf became the thread that tied together grief, healing, love, and even forgiveness.

Funny, isn’t it?

All those years, I thought Secret Santa was a forced bit of corporate cheer. But maybe it’s not about the gifts. Maybe it’s about the ways we connect, even when we don’t mean to. The small gestures that ripple out further than we ever imagined.

If you’ve ever hesitated to do something kind, thinking it’s too small to matter—don’t.

You never know when you’re handing someone the missing piece of their heart.

Like, comment, and share if this reminded you that sometimes the smallest acts carry the greatest weight. What’s the one small thing that changed your life?