Eight days later, my mom died.
For months I couldn't touch that dress.
I kept it carefully.
Sometimes he opened the closet just to see it.
It wasn't clothes.
It was a goodbye.
Six months after the funeral, my dad surprised us with news.
He was getting married.
The woman was named Shirley.
And the worst thing was that I already knew her.
I was friends with my mother.
I didn’t understand how they had gone from sharing memories about Mom to talking about marriage so quickly.
But my father seemed happy.
And I was too tired of losing people to start another war.
Shirley moved into our house.
At first it was kind.
Too kind.
Then the little changes started.
A picture of Mom disappeared from the room.
Then another.
“I’m reorganizing,” Shirley explained.
A box of mother's clothes was donated without asking me.
Her favorite cups disappeared.
A perfume that still retained its smell as well.
There were fewer and fewer traces of her.
And there was something even more uncomfortable.
Shirley couldn't stand looking at me for too long.
One afternoon I heard a friend say to her:
“The girl is very much like her mom.
I saw Shirley squeeze her jaw.
I had the same eyes.
Some of his gestures.
Even the same way to smile.
And little by little I started to feel that Shirley didn’t want to just take a place in our house.
I wanted us to forget who had been there before.
Three months before my graduation, I began to get too interested in my room.
We should organize your closet.
“It’s okay like this.
“You have too many things.
Several times he offered to clean it while I was in school.
One afternoon he even insisted:
“Go out with your friends. I'm going to use a strong product to clean and I don't want you to be breathing it.
Something seemed strange to me.
But I thought I was being paranoid.
Until the night of my graduation.
I pulled out the blue dress.
I held it in front of me.
For a moment I remembered Mom's hands passing the cloth through the sewing machine.
I put it on.
When I looked in the mirror, I cried.
Not because I was sad.
For a few seconds I felt that Mom was still there.
“I hope you like the way I look,” I whispered.
