No arrangement.
No corrections.
No hiding.
Clara eventually made it her phone background.
She never mentioned that.
Neither did I.
A week later, I found the receipt for the dress I had chosen myself.
Dresses
Simon had written something across the back.
I turned it over.
One sentence.
KEEP THIS ONE.
I laughed.
Then I put the receipt in the drawer beside my daughter’s baby photographs.
Not because the dress mattered.
But because I wanted to remember the moment I finally understood something Clara had spent years making me forget.
My body was never the problem.
Her need to control how everybody looked was.
And I was done dressing for someone else’s picture.
