If he couldn’t come to prom with me… I would bring him another way.
“I barely know how to sew,” I told Aunt Hilda.
She smiled softly.
“Then I’ll teach you.”
For weeks, we spread Dad’s shirts across the kitchen table and worked late into the night. I ruined pieces. Started over. Sewed seams crooked. Cried quietly when certain fabrics brought memories rushing back too hard.
Aunt Hilda never complained once.
Every shirt carried part of him.
The faded green one from the day he taught me how to ride my bike.
The blue shirt he wore on my first day of high school when he hugged me and told me I was braver than I believed.
The gray one from the afternoon he held me after the worst bullying incident of junior year without asking a single question.
