Chapter 20 - The Prom We Kept
The late afternoon sun was turning the western sky into a tapestry of brilliant violet and amber when Willa and I returned to our craftsman on Oak Hollow Road.
The house was no longer quiet with the heavy, paralyzing silence of unresolved grief. The windows were thrown open, letting in the sweet, clean scent of blooming lilacs and damp pine.
From the kitchen, the smell of roasted chicken and fresh bread drifted into the hallway.
In the master bedroom, Willa stood before the full-length mirror.
She wasn't wearing a hospital gown. She wasn't wearing bandages.
She was wearing a simple, elegant emerald-green silk dress—her graduation gown for the ceremony scheduled for the following morning, where she would take the stage as the class valedictorian before departing for the journalism program at Columbia University in the fall.
She reached up, checking the clasp of the silver bracelet on her wrist, then caught my reflection in the mirror behind her.
She smiled—a real, radiant, untroubled smile that reached all the way to her eyes.
"Mom," she said, her voice rich with affectionate amusement. "You're doing that thing again."
I stepped into the room, smoothed the collar of her dress, and kissed the soft skin just below the faint scar at her temple.
"What thing?" I asked, though my throat was tight with a warmth I hadn't felt in years.
"Looking at me like I'm about to change the world," she said softly.
I looked at my daughter—the girl who had faced the dark, broken the silence of a corrupt valley, and brought her father’s killers to their knees armed only with the truth and an iron will.
May you like
"You already did, Willa," I whispered, stepping back and lifting Silas’s old 35mm camera from the dresser. "You already did."
She laughed, threw her arms around my neck, and as the afternoon light flooded our home, I pressed the shutter, capturing the moment forever.
