“I promised her.”
“You were scared.”
“I still promised.”
I started crying.
“I already lost one child. I can’t sit there and watch hundreds of people tear apart the other one.”
He squeezed my hand.
“Then don’t watch them.”
I looked at him.
“Watch me.”
His father was far less understanding.
Mark, my husband of twenty-one years, stared at the dress as if Eli had placed something offensive on the kitchen table.
“You’re not serious.”
Eli didn’t answer.
Mark laughed once.
Not because anything was funny.
Because he was angry.
“You’re going to walk across graduation in a dress?”
“It was Maya’s.”
“I know whose dress it was.”
“She asked me to.”
“And you think this is what she’d want?”
“Yes.”
Mark stood up.
“This family has been through enough without you turning graduation into some kind of public spectacle.”
Eli went very still.
I said,
“Mark.”
But he kept going.
