My mother’s hands shook as she fastened all 32 pearl buttons on the wedding dress we’d chosen together after her cancer diagnosis. Hours later, the lace train split behind me on the dance floor. Isabella called it an accident, but our photographer had captured one picture Nathan wasn’t meant to see.
My mother’s fingers started shaking around the twelfth button.
“Mom?”
“I’ve got it, dear.”
“There are thirty-two.”
“I know how many there are.”
Mom squinted at the tiny pearl button on the back of my wedding dress.
“Absolutely not,” Mom said. “I’ve been waiting twenty years to button this thing.”
That was my mother.
Cancer could take her hair twice, ruin her appetite, and make climbing a flight of stairs an event worth planning around, but apparently it was not getting the last fourteen buttons.
I turned back toward the mirror.
Mom finished.
Then her hands settled on my shoulders.
That nearly got me before the ceremony even started.
***
Dress shopping had always been ours.
When I was sixteen, Mom and I passed a bridal store at the mall and spent twenty minutes criticizing dresses we couldn’t afford.
She’d pointed to a giant ball gown.
“I’d look like a cupcake, Mom.”
“A very expensive cupcake.”
From then on, we joked that when my turn came, she would help me find something that didn’t resemble dessert.
After her diagnosis, the joke stopped feeling quite so casual.
There were milestones I’d always assumed Mom would be there for.
Wedding dress.
Wedding.
Maybe babies someday.
Christmases I hadn’t thought about yet.
Suddenly I couldn’t assume anything.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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