Part 2

By the fourth shop, I watched Hazel shrink into herself, shoulders creeping toward her ears just as they had at Mason’s funeral.

I forced my voice to stay bright.

“There’s one more place. The pretty one on Maple.”

“Mom.”

“Just one more, sweetheart.”

The old nickname nearly slipped out, but I caught it before it could hurt her. That word belonged to Mason. Only Mason.

The Maple boutique had a gown in the window I had already imagined on her. Ivory, soft, romantic. Hazel stood before the glass for a long moment before asking, in a voice I had not heard in a year, “Could I try the one in the window?”

The saleswoman looked her slowly up and down, her mouth tightening.

“That’s not going to work for you, honey. You’re too big.”

That was it. No kindness. No apology.

Hazel did not cry. She did not protest. She simply turned, walked out the door, and got into the passenger seat of my car. I followed, my hands trembling around the keys.

“Hazel, I am so sorry. I am going to go back in there and—”

“Please drive.”

“Sweetheart—”

“Please. Just drive.”

She stared forward the entire way home. I kept looking over, waiting for her to break, to cry, to do anything at all. Nothing came. That frightened me more than sobbing would have.

She entered the house, climbed the stairs, and shut her bedroom door. I heard the lock click.

I went after her. I sat on the carpet outside her room with my back against the door.

“Hazel. Open the door. Please.”

“I’m not going to prom, Mom.”

“Honey, we can find something. We can sew something ourselves, we can—”

“Mom. Stop.” Her voice was empty and tired. “I’m not going. Please just stop trying.”

I pressed my forehead to the door and cried as quietly as I could. I had already buried one child. I could feel the second slipping away through the space beneath that door, and I did not know how to keep hold of her.

I do not know how long I stayed there. Long enough for my legs to go numb. Long enough for the hallway light to change.

A few days later, someone knocked.

I opened the door in yesterday’s clothes. Eli stood on the porch in a faded hoodie, holding a small notebook to his chest. He looked nervous. He also looked certain, which was new for him.

“Mrs. Mave. Can I talk to you out here?”

I stepped onto the porch and closed the door behind me.

“Is Hazel okay? Did she text you?”

“No, ma’am.” He inhaled. “I need her measurements.”

“Eli, what—”

“Prom is in two weeks. I can do this. I know how that sounds. But I need you to trust me. And I need you not to tell her anything. Not one word.”

I stared at the boy I had watched grow up just two houses away. Seventeen years old. Chewed fingernails. Holding that notebook like it was a signed agreement.

“Eli, you have never made a dress like this in your life.”

“No, ma’am. I haven’t.”

“Then how—”

“I just need you to say yes.”

I nearly refused. I had every reason to. But there was something in his eyes that did not look seventeen. Something steadier than anything I had felt all year.

“Yes,” I whispered.

That night, I stood by my kitchen window and watched the light in Eli’s bedroom stay on long past three in the morning, wondering what in the world I had agreed to.

Eli’s bedroom light became my new clock.

Past midnight, past two, past three. Some nights, I stood at the kitchen sink and watched it glow while the whole street slept.

His mother called me on the third day.

“Mave, his fingers are sore,” she said. “I wrapped them in cold bandages, and he unwrapped them. He missed a chemistry test.”

“Should I stop him?”

“I don’t think anything could,” she said softly. “He’s been at that machine since he could reach the pedal. You know that.”

I did know. I had watched his mother hem my curtains while six-year-old Eli handed her pins from a magnetic bowl and asked why thread had a number. By ten, he was drawing dresses in the margins of spelling homework. By thirteen, he was altering his own jackets on her old Singer.

I hung up and pressed my forehead to the cool window.

Two weeks felt impossible. Two weeks felt like a countdown to one more disappointment I would have to absorb on my daughter’s behalf.

Meanwhile, Hazel kept sinking.

She stopped coming downstairs for breakfast. She wore the same gray hoodie for three days straight. When I knocked, she answered with single syllables.

I tried to keep her tied to me with small lies.

“I’m just running errands,” I would say, when I was really buying ivory silk thread from a craft store because Eli had texted me a list.

On the fourth day, I went into her room to switch her laundry and found a notebook beneath the bed. Not the freshman-year one I had peeked through months earlier behind the paperbacks. A newer one. Sophomore year, written in her tighter, angrier hand.

Names. Pages of them.

Girls who whispered when she passed. Boys who posted things the week after Mason’s funeral. Comments she had screenshotted, printed, and tucked between the pages like pressed flowers turned black.

I sat on her carpet and read every page.

That was the real enemy. Not a saleswoman. Not a window display.

It was a chorus my daughter had been carrying under her ribs for two years.

I picked up my phone and photographed the pages one by one. Then I sent them to Eli. I don’t know if any of this helps you, I typed. I just thought you should see what she’s been carrying.

The three dots appeared, then disappeared, for a long time. I sat on her carpet watching them, wondering what he could possibly do with a list of cruelties less than two weeks before prom. Burn them, maybe. Read them and mourn. I had not sent them with a plan. I sent them because I could not carry them alone.

When his reply finally arrived, it was only one sentence. Some of these I already knew. Thank you for the rest.

Then, one minute later: I know what to do with them.

I stared at that second message until the screen went black. Of course he knew. He had been her best friend through all of it. He had seen the hallways I had only heard whispers about. He had already built the dress’s bones. Now he had found its heart.

On the morning of day six, I made the mistake of calling the shoe store from the kitchen.

“Size eight, ivory, low heel,” I said into the phone. “For prom, yes.”

When I turned, Hazel was standing in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“Hazel—”

“I told you to stop.” Her voice split 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, my voice trembling. “I love you in this kitchen. I love you in that hoodie. I just want you to have one night.”

“For who?” she shouted. “For you? For him?”

She slammed her door so hard the picture frames rattled.

I stood there with the phone still in my hand.

I almost called Eli immediately. I almost crossed the lawn and told him to put the needle down, that I had been wrong, that I was sorry about his fingers.

Instead, I walked.

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