“Why is she wearing her mother’s dress?” Dad asked.
Alexis stopped crying long enough to look at him.
For several seconds, no one answered.
The music still played across the gym, but the space around us had gone strangely quiet.
Brianna’s friends stood near the dance floor, pretending not to watch.
Two parent chaperones had moved closer.
Brianna remained behind her mother, twisting the blue tulle of her designer skirt between her fingers.
Dad touched the exposed section of warm gold fabric beneath the mustard sleeve.
His hand trembled.
“I asked you a question, Alexis.”
Alexis wiped beneath her eyes and forced a wounded expression onto her face.
“I was trying to do something thoughtful.”
Dad looked at the stiff lace collar, the uneven overskirt, and the cheap decorations hanging from loose stitches.
“Thoughtful?”
“She needed a dress.
This one was sitting unused in a trunk.”
“That trunk was closed.”
His voice was still quiet, but I had never heard it sound like that.
“You knew it was closed.”
Alexis glanced at the people watching us.
“Can we please discuss this at home?”
“No,” I said.
It was the first word I had spoken since Dad arrived.
Alexis turned toward me sharply.
I held the detached sleeve in one hand and the edge of the collar in the other.
“You told Dad you spent hours shopping for this dress,” I said.
“You let him believe he paid for it.”
“I altered it for you.
That took time.”
“You made it ugly.”
Her mouth tightened.
“That is a matter of opinion.”
Brianna let out a nervous breath that almost sounded like a laugh.
Dad looked at her.
“Did you know where the dress came from?”
Brianna’s eyes moved to Alexis.
Her mother answered for her.
“Leave her out of this.”
“I’m asking Brianna.”
Brianna stared at the floor.
“I knew Mom found it upstairs.”
“Found it where?”
“In the cedar trunk.”
Alexis spun toward her.
“Brianna.”
“You said it was just an old dress,” Brianna blurted.
“You said nobody cared about it anymore.”
Dad closed his eyes.
The cedar trunk had belonged to my mother’s grandmother.
After Mom died, Dad placed her most personal things inside it: letters, photographs, her wedding veil, a stack of recipe cards written in her narrow handwriting, and the gold dress she had worn to her own senior prom.
I had seen the dress only once.
I was ten when Mom showed me an old photograph of herself standing beside a battered car, laughing as Dad tried to pin a boutonniere to his jacket.
The dress in the photograph had been simple and elegant, with a fitted waist, soft sleeves, and a flowing gold skirt.
It had not looked anything like the costume Alexis gave me.
But now, beneath the stiff mustard overlay, I could see it.
The same warm fabric.
