Eli’s dress didn’t just fit Hazel’s body; it fit the weight of everything she’d carried alone. When she stepped into that ivory gown, the roses seemed to hold her together where grief had split her apart. The mirror, once her enemy, became a witness. I watched her shoulders lift, her breath deepen, as if she were trying on the idea of deserving to be seen.

In the gym, when Eli’s voice trembled through the speakers and she found Mason’s locket hidden beneath the largest rose, time fractured. The room that had mocked her was forced to listen to the echo of its own cruelty. But Hazel didn’t crumble; she rose. She pressed her brother’s memory to her heart and chose to dance anyway. That night did not resurrect my son, yet it resurrected something else we’d buried without noticing: the belief that love, however fragile, could still remake a life from the ruins.