Stepmom stole my prom dress and had a copy sewn to upstage me—then my date walked her straight into a spotlight
Chapter 1 - The Dress She Finished Before She Died
I was fifteen the year my mother ran out of time.
The doctors used words like "aggressive" and "no longer treatable," and then, eventually, "weeks." By the end she was living in a hospital bed we'd set up in the living room, sleeping most of the day, depending on my father and me for nearly everything.
And still, somehow, she decided she was going to make my prom dress.
Mom had been a seamstress her entire life. Give her a photograph and she could build the garment from nothing. She knew she would never watch me leave for prom, so she made sure a piece of her would be there in her place.
Dusty pink. Strapless. A line of small fabric flowers along the left side, every petal folded by her own hands. She pulled the final thread through on a Tuesday afternoon and let me try it on while she watched from the bed.
She died eight days later.
I was too hollowed out to keep track of how quickly my father moved after that. He went back to the office the morning after we buried her, saying the house was too quiet to sit in. Within a month, Denise had her own key.
Denise had been my mother's best friend since before I was born. The whole family treated the marriage like a gift. "At least it's someone who already loves you, Laney," my aunt told me. "She'll look after you the way Vivian would have wanted."
That is not how it went.
It began with small things. Mom's favorite mug "slipped" out of Denise's hand, and suddenly the house needed "decluttering." A few days later I walked down the hallway and every framed picture of my mother had been turned to face the wall. Denise said the reflections hurt her eyes.
One evening at dinner she studied me for a while and said, "You make the exact face your mother made when she was upset. I can only imagine how draining that's been for your dad, living with it all these years."
I looked at him, waiting. He kept his eyes on his plate and said nothing.
The truth is I lost two parents that year. The father I'd grown up with was replaced by a man who would agree to anything to keep his new wife calm.
About a month before prom, I came home early and found Denise in my bedroom, my closet open, her hands moving through the last few dresses of my mother's that I still had. When I asked what she was doing, she broke into tears, marched straight to my father, and told him I'd screamed at her for no reason.
May you like
He didn't ask for my side of it. "She's grieving too, Laney," he said. "She lost her best friend. Show her a little patience."
That was the night I understood no one in that house was on my side.
