When my dad died last spring, the world went silent. He had been my steady in every storm—the pancakes, the groan-worthy jokes, the pep talks ending with, “You can do anything, sweetheart.”
After Mom died when I was eight, it was just the two of us until he married Carla. From the start, Carla felt cold and distant. At the hospital, she didn’t shed a tear, and at the funeral, she whispered, “You’re embarrassing yourself. He’s gone. It happens to everyone.” Her words cut deeper than grief itself.
Two weeks later, she began clearing out his belongings—suits, shoes, and a trash bag of his ties. Each silk tie smelled faintly of him, and I couldn’t let them go. Sitting on my bedroom floor, I taught myself to sew, piecing together a skirt from his ties. Every print held a memory:
