Ink smeared across the bodice.
My hands started shaking.
“No… no, no…”
Then I heard her voice.
“Oh. You found it.”
Stephanie stood in the doorway.
Calm. Almost amused.
“You did this?” I whispered.
She didn’t even deny it.
“I warned you,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let you humiliate us.”
“It was my mom’s.”
“And now I’m your mother,” she snapped. “It’s time to grow up.”
Something inside me broke.
I don’t know how long I sat there crying.
But then my grandma walked in.
She had come early.
She saw the dress. Saw me.
And something in her changed.
“Get up,” she said. “We’re fixing it.”
For two hours, she worked.
Hands shaking, but steady.
She scrubbed the stains.
Stitched the seam.
Did everything she could.
I just sat there, holding my breath.
When she finished, she held it up.
“Put it on.”
It wasn’t perfect.
But it was still hers.
That’s all I needed.
At prom, people stared.
Not in a bad way.
“You look amazing,” someone said.
“It was my mom’s,” I told them.
And for the first time that night…
I smiled for real.
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