The first time I tried to sew the dress together, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, not because I didn’t know what I was doing, but because every piece of fabric I touched felt like something far more fragile than cloth, like I was holding onto the last physical trace of the only person who had ever truly made me feel safe.
At one point, the needle slipped and pierced straight through my thumb, and although the sharp pain shot up my hand, I bit it back instantly, pressing the blood into an old rag so it wouldn’t stain the olive-green fabric spread carefully across my bed, because that fabric still carried his scent—faint, but unmistakable—like aftershave mixed with something metallic and warm, something that refused to disappear no matter how much time had passed.
I never worked during the day.
I couldn’t risk it.
Because if Camila or her daughters ever saw what I was doing, I already knew exactly how it would unfold—the laughter first, followed by those slow, cutting remarks that didn’t sound loud but somehow stayed with you long after they were said.
So I worked at night, in silence, stitching under the dim glow of a lamp, hiding every piece the moment I heard footsteps in the hallway, as if I were doing something forbidden instead of trying to create something meaningful.
And yet, with every cut of the scissors and every careful pull of thread, it felt less like sewing a dress and more like trying to hold myself together.
There were nights when I stopped completely, pressing the jacket against my face just to breathe him in again, letting the memories come back in quiet waves—the way he used to sit beside me at the sewing machine, guiding my hands with steady patience, always telling me that as long as I kept trying, I would figure it out.
Back then, everything felt simple.
But after he married Camila, the house slowly became something else entirely.
Her kindness was never real—it appeared only when he was watching, soft and convincing, and disappeared the moment he left for duty, leaving behind a version of her that felt colder, sharper, like she had been waiting for the moment she no longer had to pretend.
The chores multiplied without explanation.
Laundry appeared outside my door as if it had always belonged to me.
Lia and Jen moved through the house like they had claimed it long before I understood I had lost it.
And sometimes, when it all became too much, I would stand alone in his old room, clutching that uniform, whispering into the silence as if he could still hear me, as if somewhere, somehow, he might still answer.
The idea didn’t come all at once.
It came quietly, almost like a voice I remembered rather than imagined.
Not just to wear the uniform… but to transform it.
To take something that belonged to him and turn it into something that carried both of us.
Something that told our story without needing a single word.
From that moment on, I didn’t stop.
For weeks, I worked in secret, sewing late into the night, hiding everything at the slightest sound, and once, when Jen pushed the door open without knocking, her arms full of expensive dresses and her eyes already searching for something to criticize, I managed to cover the fabric just in time.
She smirked, called me “Cinderella” like it was an insult, dropped more chores onto my bed, and walked out without another glance, as if I barely existed.
The second the door shut, I pulled the blanket back and let myself smile.
Because for the first time, I felt like I was creating something they couldn’t take from me.
