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.
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.”
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.”
