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The house was already full on the morning of my wedding. Relatives drifted through the kitchen balancing coffee cups, music played softly from someone’s phone, and the scent of breakfast mixed with hairspray and flowers. Yet in the middle of all that warmth, I found my daughter Lily hidden in the laundry room, curled beside the dryer with quiet tears slipping down her cheeks. I sat behind her and wrapped my arms around her small frame, letting silence do the work before words. When she whispered, “I checked it last night, Mom. It was perfect,” my heart sank. I knew she was talking about the wedding dress she had spent months knitting—stitch by careful stitch, love woven into every thread.
Upstairs, the truth waited in the closet. The dress hung where I had placed it, but the bodice had been pulled apart, the yarn loosened in jagged lines. A dark stain spread across the skirt where a liquid had soaked in and dried. Lily gasped behind me, and I turned quickly to hold her.
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