“No. Well not really. I opened and saw some lace, but I couldn’t bring myself to..”
I might not have thrown it in the trash, but I hadn’t pulled down the zipper either. I couldn’t. It just didn’t feel right. It hadn’t then and it didn’t now. I wasn’t supposed to see the dress until Cassidy walked down the aisle, looking like an angel ready to make me the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. It felt wrong, even under these circumstances.
“I have an idea.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a charity.”
“No.”
“Let me finish,” Mom chided, reminding me that while I was all grown up, she was still and always would be my mother.
“Sorry, Mom.”
“There’s a charity who takes wedding dresses and turns them into gowns for babies.”
“Gowns for babies?” Dad asked after he and I exchanged a confused look.
“It’s called Angel Gowns. They take dresses and make gowns for babies and donate them for babies who don’t… don’t make it.”
Seeing Mom teary was hard. Dad moved to her side and wrapped his arm around her shoulders as she batted away tears like they were nothing more than an annoyance.
“That’s a beautiful idea,” Dad assured her.
It was a beautiful idea. One that, as much as it hurt, made the most sense. There was no sense me hanging on to a dress I’d never even be able to bring myself to look at.
“Mom?”
“Yes, Hayden?”
“Would you… would you…” Fuck! Why was this so hard? “Could you please take care of it for me?”
“Oh, Hayden.” Mom shrugged off Dad’s hold and shoved the bag in his hands, coming straight for me and wrapping her arms around my waist.
It felt like forever since I’d been her little boy, but in her eyes, she’d never see me as anything else. Holding her tight, we both sobbed in silence, not giving a shit how we looked.
When she pulled back and looked up at me, there was no doubt in my mind she was hurting as much as I was. “It’s just an idea. You don’t have to…”
“Yeah, Mom, I do. If you don’t want to…”
“I’ll take care of it,” she promised, hugging me again.
“Thank you.”
I watched as Dad folded the bag and set it by the door with Mom’s purse.
If I wasn’t exhausted before, I was now. I tried to mask my yawn behind my hand, while Mom was in the bathroom “fixing her face” as she called it, but Dad caught everything.
“You sure you’re okay with everything?” he checked.
Nodding. “Yeah. I think it’s the best idea. I couldn’t imagine someone else ever wearing it, but I didn’t want it hanging in my closet forever either. I just didn’t know what to do. Mom’s idea… I like it.”
Mom appeared looking refreshed.
“Well, Simone. We need to get going. Hayden needs his beauty sleep and we have a couple of things to take care of this afternoon,” Dad reminded.
It took another ten minutes to convince them that I was going to be okay before they filed out the door, my eyes transfixed on the white bag in Mom’s arms as they left. Just because I knew I’d made the right decision, didn’t mean it still didn’t hurt and it wasn’t hard. It was hard as fuck, but it had to be done.
