He was making something I didn't have a name for yet.
Prom night came faster than I was ready for. Eli stood on our porch in a thrifted suit, a garment bag draped over his arm like something holy.
He used Mason's name for her.
Hazel opened her bedroom door to refuse him. Then she saw the gown.
Ivory silk. Voluminous roses blooming down the skirt like a garden in motion.
"Eli," she whispered. "Where did you..."
"Just put it on, Hazelnut."
He used Mason's name for her. My knees almost buckled. I thought of Mason teaching him to drive stick in our driveway the summer before he died, ruffling his hair like a kid brother's.
She shook her head, backing toward the bed. "I can't. Eli, I can't."
I watched from the hallway as she pressed both hands to her mouth.
He didn't push. He laid the gown across her desk chair and sat down on the floor, suit and all, leaning against her bookshelf. "Then I'll sit here. Your brother made me promise, before the accident. He said if you ever got quiet, I had to get loud enough for both of us."
She made a small, broken sound.
"One song," Eli said. "That's all. Then I bring you home."
The silence stretched. I watched from the hallway as she pressed both hands to her mouth, looked at the dress, looked at him. Then she lifted it off the chair like it weighed nothing.
She came down the stairs ten minutes later. For the first time in a year, my daughter looked in the mirror and did not flinch.
She breathed in. She breathed out. She took his arm.
In the car, she went gray. At the gym doors, she stopped dead, one hand on the frame, the other gripping mine so hard my ring bit bone.
"Mom. I can't go in there. They're all in there."
