“Mrs. Mave,” he said one afternoon, looking up at me. He had called me that since he was twelve, when he decided calling me only by my first name felt too casual and anything more formal felt too far. “She ate half a sandwich today.”
“Thank you, Eli.”
“For what?”
“For sitting with her.”
He shrugged like it was nothing. To him, I think it was.
I found her journals once, the old ones from freshman year, tucked behind a row of paperbacks. Names of girls. Names of boys. Cruel little phrases written in her round handwriting, the kind of words you only write down because you cannot say them out loud.
I put the journal back exactly where I found it.
That spring, prom invitations started arriving in other girls’ mailboxes. I saw the pictures their mothers posted online, daughters in pastel dresses holding bouquets.
I knocked on Hazel’s door.
“Sweetheart. Prom is in three weeks.”
“I’m not going, Mom.”
“Mason wanted you to go.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then I heard the bed creak and footsteps, and the door cracked open an inch.
“Mason wanted a lot of things.”
“He wanted you to wear a dress and dance and laugh,” I said. “He told me so.”
“Mom.”
“Just try one on. One dress. If you hate it, we come home and never speak of it again. Deal?”
She looked at me through that inch of open door, and I saw something flicker behind her eyes that I had not seen in months. Not hope, exactly. Curiosity, maybe. A small permission.
“One dress,” she said.
I drove to the strip mall the next Saturday with my hands tight on the wheel and a knot of something dangerous in my chest. Hope. After a year of nothing, I was daring to feel hope again.
I should have known better.
The first three boutiques used softer words. “Limited inventory.” “Sample sizes only.” “We could special order, but not in time.” Still, it was clear they thought she was too big for their dresses.
By the fourth shop, I could see Hazel folding into herself, shoulders rising toward her ears the way they had at Mason’s funeral.
I tried to keep my voice bright.
“There’s one more place. The pretty one on Maple.”
“Mom.”
“Just one more, sweetheart.”
