When my husband told my daughter, “You don’t even realize how beautiful your figure is,” I became seriously worried for the first time. A few weeks later, during a party, I noticed him whisper something to my daughter, and the two of them walked away together. Five minutes later, I was already standing outside a locked door…

A few seconds later, I heard the lock turn.

I pushed the door open.

And I just stood there.

Emily was standing in the middle of the room wearing a long, dark blue dress.

But it wasn’t just any dress.

I recognized it.

It belonged to my mother.

It was the same dress my mother had worn to my graduation nearly thirty years earlier.

My mother had died six years ago.

I thought the dress had been lost during one of our moves.

Daniel was standing beside Emily, holding a small box.

Old photographs were scattered across the table.

In one of them, my mother was wearing the same dress.

In another, I was eighteen years old.

And beside those photographs was a new picture of Emily standing in almost exactly the same pose.

I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.

“What is going on?”

Emily was the first to speak.

“Mom… do you remember how Grandma always said that one day this dress would be worn by three generations?”

I remembered immediately.

My mother used to say it all the time, almost as a joke.

Emily continued:

“I found it in one of Grandma’s old boxes. But it didn’t fit me properly.”