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That spring, prom invitations started arriving in other girls’ mailboxes. I saw the pictures their mothers posted online, daughters in pastel dresses holding bouquets.
I knocked on Hazel’s door.
“Mason wanted you to go.”
“Sweetheart. Prom is in three weeks.”
“I’m not going, Mom.”
“Mason wanted you to go.”
She was quiet for a long time. Then I heard the bed creak and footsteps, and the door cracked open an inch.
“Mason wanted a lot of things.”
“He wanted you to wear a dress and dance and laugh,” I said. “He told me so.”
“Mom.”
I should have known better.
“Just try one on. One dress. If you hate it, we come home and never speak of it again. Deal?”
She looked at me through that inch of open door, and I saw something flicker behind her eyes that I had not seen in months. Not hope, exactly. Curiosity, maybe. A small permission.
“One dress,” she said.
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