She did all of it so Jesse could walk into his senior prom feeling like he belonged there.
I still remember the evening he came down the stairs.
Our house sat on a quiet street outside Cleveland, a two-story place with creaking floorboards, a narrow front porch, and a screen door that banged whenever someone forgot to catch it.
That night, the hallway smelled faintly of lemon polish and my father’s coffee.
I was sitting on the bottom step, pretending not to wait.
Then Jesse appeared at the top of the stairs.
He was seventeen, tall in a way he had only recently grown into, as though his body had stretched before he knew what to do with it. His dark hair was combed back carefully, though one stubborn piece kept falling over his forehead.
