I stood there, trying to keep my voice even. “Dad said it was ours.”
She laughed then, one of those tiny cutting laughs that somehow hurts worse than yelling.
“And honestly?” she said. “No one wants to see you prancing around in some overpriced princess costume.”
I felt the words hit like a slap.
“So there is money,” I said. “You’re just not letting me use it.”
Her chair scraped back against the floor. “Watch your tone.”
“You’re using our money.”
Her face went flat in a way that always meant danger.
“I am keeping this family afloat,” she said. “You have no idea what things cost.”
“Then why did Dad say the money was ours?”
“Because your father,” she snapped, “was bad with money and bad with boundaries.”
I went upstairs and cried into my pillow like I was twelve again and the world had just cracked open.
Two nights later, Noah came into my room carrying a stack of old denim.
I looked up and froze.
Mom’s jeans.
Not just one pair. Several. Folded carefully in his arms like something sacred.
He set them down on my bed and asked, “Do you trust me?”
“With what?”
He nodded toward the denim. “I took sewing last year, remember?”
I stared at him. Then at the jeans. Then back at him.
“What are you talking about?”
He hesitated, suddenly looking much younger than fifteen. “I think I can make you a dress.”
I blinked.
“You can make a dress?”
He panicked instantly. “I mean, maybe not, maybe it’ll be terrible, and if you hate the idea that’s fine, I just thought—”
I grabbed his wrist before he could finish.
“No,” I said. “I love the idea.”
So that’s what we did.
We worked in secret whenever Carla went out or locked herself in her room with the television too loud. Noah dug Mom’s old sewing machine out of the laundry closet and set it up on the kitchen table like he was preparing for surgery.
The whole thing felt fragile and impossible at first.
But then it didn’t.
It felt like Mom was there with us somehow—in the faded denim, in the careful way Noah handled every piece, in the hush that settled over the kitchen while the machine buzzed and stitched.
He worked with a kind of concentration that made me stop breathing sometimes. He used the different shades of blue like they were deliberate brushstrokes. He kept pockets in places that made the skirt feel alive. He turned seams into structure, old wear into beauty.
