“You keep trying to drag me back to who I was.”
“What are you doing?”
“Hazel—”
“I told you to stop.” Her voice broke open. “I told you. Why won’t you listen to me?”
“Baby—”
“You keep trying to drag me back to who I was. She’s gone, Mom. She died when Mason died. Why can’t you accept that?”
“Because I love who you are now too,” I said, and my voice was shaking. “I love you in this kitchen. I love you in that hoodie. I just want you to have one night.”
She slammed her door so hard the picture frames jumped.
“For who?” she shouted. “For you? For him?”
She slammed her door so hard the picture frames jumped.
I stood there with the phone still in my hand.
I almost called Eli right then. I almost walked across the lawn and told him to put down the needle, that I had been wrong, that I was sorry for his fingers.
Instead, I walked.
His mother let me in without a word and pointed up the stairs.
This was not mine to open.
I pushed his door open.
He was asleep at the sewing machine, cheek pressed against the table, one hand still curled around a spool of thread. My photographs were printed and fanned across the floor beside him, names circled in pencil. The dress stood on a mannequin behind him.
Ivory. Structured. Roses blooming in tiers down the skirt like a garden someone had grown overnight.
I stepped closer.
There was something inside one of the roses. Tiny stitches, words maybe, tucked into the folds of the silk where you would have to lift the petal to see.
He was making something I didn’t have a name for yet.
I reached out, then stopped.
This was not mine to open.
I covered Eli with a blanket from his bed and clicked off the lamp.
Walking home across the dark yard, I understood.
He wasn’t making a dress.
He was making something I didn’t have a name for yet.
Prom night came faster than I was ready for. Eli stood on our porch in a thrifted suit, a garment bag draped over his arm like something holy.
He used Mason’s name for her.
Hazel opened her bedroom door to refuse him. Then she saw the gown.
Ivory silk. Voluminous roses blooming down the skirt like a garden in motion.
“Eli,” she whispered. “Where did you…”
“Just put it on, Hazelnut.
