The first night I tried to stitch the dress, my hands shook so badly I could barely hold the needle. It slipped—and drove straight through my thumb. I swallowed the scream, wiped the blood on an old rag, and kept going. That olive fabric wasn’t just cloth. It still smelled faintly like him—aftershave, metal, warmth—a memory I hadn’t realized I was clinging to so desperately.
If Camila or her daughters caught me, I knew exactly what would happen. Laughter first, cruel jokes next. So I worked in silence. Each cut of the scissors, each pull of thread, became less about sewing and more about holding myself together. Nights were spent pressing the jacket to my face, remembering how he had guided my hands at the sewing machine—patient, steady, like nothing could go wrong as long as he was there.
After he married Camila, everything changed. Warmth drained from the house when he left for duty. Chores doubled overnight. Laundry appeared outside my door like quiet demands. Lia and Jen moved through the house as if it already belonged to them. Some nights, I’d stand in his empty room, whispering into the silence, telling myself he could still hear me. And sometimes, in that quiet, I almost felt his answer: Wear it like you mean it, Chels.
That’s when the idea struck me—not just to wear the uniform, but to transform it. To take what he left behind and turn it into something that belonged to me. Something that told our story.
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