When I was little, I used to sit next to her and look at those photos for hours.
“One day,” I’d tell her, “I’m going to wear this too.”
She’d smile and smooth the fabric with her hand.
“Then we’ll keep it safe,” she’d say.
We didn’t.
Because life didn’t.
Cancer took her when I was 12.
One year she was making pancakes and singing badly in the kitchen.
The next, she was too weak to stand.
And then she was gone.
After that, everything felt… quiet.
Not peaceful. Just empty.
My dad tried. I know he did.
But we weren’t really living. We were just getting through days.
I kept the dress.
I hid it in the back of my closet, inside a garment bag.
Sometimes I’d take it out just to touch it.
It still felt like her.
That dress became the only thing I had left that didn’t feel like it disappeared.
Then my dad remarried.
Stephanie.
She didn’t like anything in the house that existed before her.
The photos disappeared first.
Then decorations. Then furniture.
“Old,” she called it.
“Tacky.”
One day I came home and our dining table — the one we used every holiday — was gone.
“Refreshing the space,” she said.
It stopped feeling like home after that.
The first time she saw the dress, she laughed.
I was trying it on in my room, standing in front of the mirror.
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