Skirts. Jackets. A prom dress for a girl down the street that got more compliments than the one from the boutique.
She wanted to be a fashion designer. She said it with a quiet stubbornness that scared me a little, because I knew how expensive dreams could be.
That week, she had been staying up late over a dress that wasn’t for her.
Lily loved to sew.
I’d see the light under her door at midnight. Then at one. Then later.
***
On the third night, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I padded down the hall in my robe and found her hunched over the machine, hair in a clip, a pin between her teeth.
“Sweetheart, it’s nearly one.” I pulled a chair up beside her. “Can’t this wait?”
She took the pin out of her mouth.
“It’s due tomorrow. Annie’s singing in the school concert, Mom. Her mother can’t afford a dress.”
“Can’t this wait?”
I knew who Annie was, sort of. A girl in Lily’s grade. Thin, quiet, always in oversized sweatshirts.
Her mother cleaned offices at night. I’d seen her once at a parent night, still in her work polo, standing at the back of the room like she didn’t think she was allowed to sit.
Lily flexed her tired fingers and picked up the needle again.
“The kids already laugh at what she wears,” she said, without looking at me. “Yesterday she asked the teacher if she could sing from behind the curtain.”
A girl in Lily’s grade.
“Oh, honey.”
“I want her to wear something she doesn’t have to hide in.”
She spread the skirt across her knees. It was deep green, simple and beautiful, the kind of dress that doesn’t try too hard.
“She has such a pretty voice, Mom. You should hear her.”
I felt a swell of pride. I remember thinking that Daniel would have been proud too.
“I want her to wear something she doesn’t have to hide in.”
Then she reached for the bag beside her chair and laid a blue cardigan on top of the dress.
My breath caught.
It was her father’s last gift. He’d bought it the winter before he died, two sizes too big, because he said she would grow into it. She wore it on bad days. She wore it to his funeral. I’d caught her sleeping in it.
