Locked.
I knocked.
Everything inside went silent immediately.
“Emily.”
No answer.
“Open the door.”
A few seconds later, I heard the lock move.
I pushed the door open.
And stopped cold.
Emily was standing in the center of the room wearing a long dark-blue dress.
But it wasn’t just any dress.
I recognized it.
It had belonged to my mother.
It was the same dress she had worn to my college graduation almost thirty years earlier.
My mother had died six years ago.
I thought the dress had been lost long ago when we moved houses.
Daniel was standing beside Emily, holding a small box.
Old photographs were spread across the table.
In one, my mother was wearing that same dress.
In another, I was eighteen years old.
And beside those was a new photo of Emily standing in almost exactly the same pose.
I couldn’t understand what I was looking at.
“What is going on?”
Emily was the first to walk toward me.
“Mom… do you remember how Grandma always used to say that one day this dress should be worn by three generations?”
I remembered immediately.
My mother had always said it almost like a joke.
Emily continued.
“I found it in one of Grandma’s old boxes. But it didn’t fit me properly.”
She glanced at Daniel.
“Daniel helped me find the woman who used to alter Grandma’s clothes years ago. We wanted to restore it.”
I looked at my husband.
“And that’s why you were talking about her figure?”
Daniel closed his eyes for a second.
“Yes… and I now realize just how stupidly I worded it.”
Emily started laughing.
“Mom, for months I kept saying my body was wrong for the dress. Daniel was trying to convince me that there was nothing wrong with me—the dress was simply made to different measurements.”
Suddenly, every strange conversation, every glance, every silence began to make sense.
But there was still one more thing.
Daniel handed the small box to Emily.
