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I watched from the hallway as she pressed both hands to her mouth.
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.”
She made a small, broken sound.
“One song,” Eli said. “That’s all. Then I bring you home.”
The silence stretched. I watched from the hallway as she pressed both hands to her mouth, looked at the dress, looked at him. Then she lifted it off the chair like it weighed nothing.
She came down the stairs ten minutes later. For the first time in a year, my daughter looked in the mirror and did not flinch.
She breathed in. She breathed out. She took his arm.
In the car, she went gray. At the gym doors, she stopped dead, one hand on the frame, the other gripping mine so hard my ring bit bone.
“Mom. I can’t go in there. They’re all in there.”
“One song,” Eli said softly, on her other side. He didn’t touch her. He just held out his arm and waited. “If you want to leave after the first note, we leave. I swear it.”
She breathed in. She breathed out. She took his arm.
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