Chapter 24: Same Stage

Connor's mother brought the dress back in September, in a flat white box tied with string.

She had pressed it herself.

"I took it from his closet," she said. "I don't know how it got there, and I don't want to."

I put it on the night of Reading Night, the last Friday of October, in the carriage house mirror.

The grey-blue wool, the white collar, the cap.

The pockets were still deep.

I stood in front of the glass and looked at the woman wearing it.

She had pin marks on her fingertips, a green coat over her chair, and a man's work boots by the door.

She looked like somebody who lived in her own life.

"You're doing it again," Pippa said from the bed. "Looking at yourself like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're surprised." She was in the black velvet cape, green-lined, a size bigger than last year.

"I made it so it would still fit you," I said.

"You made it so I could grow." She hopped down. "It's the same thing."

We walked into Dunmore Elementary at six.

The gym looked the way it always looked, orange streamers and paper bats and the long folding tables along the wall.

The stage was at the far end, with its black curtain and its painted brick backdrop.

My knees remembered it.

I stopped in the doorway, and my daughter slid her hand into mine without looking.

"It's just a gym, Mom," she said.

"I know."

"If you want to leave, we can leave."

"I don't want to leave."

"Good," Pippa said. "Because there's cupcakes."

The bake table stood where it always stood, and behind it was a man in my apron.