Prom night was supposed to feel like stepping into a memory I’d been saving since I was small—the lavender satin, the tiny embroidered flowers, the spaghetti straps that caught light like water. When I was little, I’d sit on Mom’s lap and trace the dress in her scrapbook photos, promising I’d wear it when I turned seventeen. We kept that promise the way you keep a candle in a storm—protected, carefully, always within reach.
Cancer stole her when I was twelve. After the funeral, the dress became what I touched when the house felt too quiet: a zipper half-open in the dark, the cool slide of satin under my fingertips, the imagined scent of her Sunday pancakes and off-key humming. It wasn’t fashion. It was the last conversation we hadn’t finished.
Then my dad remarried. Stephanie arrived with white leather furniture, sharp heels, and opinions that knocked pictures off walls. The angels from our mantel vanished in a week, the family photo gallery came down the next, and the oak table where we carved pumpkins ended up on the curb. “Refreshing the space,” she said brightly, as if history were a throw pillow you swap out seasonally. Dad asked me to be patient. I tried—until patience felt like permission.
I’d already told Dad about the dress. He knew. He said he had to work a double on prom day but promised he’d be home before midnight to see me in it. “You’ll be proud,” I told him. “I already am,” he said, kissing my forehead like he could anchor me there.
The afternoon of prom, I curled my hair the way Mom used to, soft blush, natural lips, the lavender clip she’d worn pulled from a small tin of keepsakes. Butterflies everywhere. I unzipped the garment bag and stopped breathing.
The seam down the satin’s center was ripped open. The bodice was splashed with something dark and sticky, the embroidered flowers smeared with black. I slid to the carpet, dress in my lap, the room spinning in and out like a bad signal. From the doorway came a voice dipped in honey and something meaner.