Grandma Rose used to tell me that some truths don’t sit right in small hands.

“They fit better,” she’d say, “when you’re grown enough to carry them.”

I didn’t understand what she meant. Not when I was eight and trailing her through the garden. Not when I was fifteen and convinced I already understood everything about the world. Not even when I turned eighteen and she brought out her wedding dress in its faded garment bag, holding it under the porch light like it was something sacred.

“You’ll wear this one day,” she told me.

“It’s sixty years old,” I laughed.

“It’s timeless,” she corrected gently. “Promise me you’ll alter it yourself. Stitch by stitch. And wear it. Not for me — for you. So you’ll know I was there.”

I promised.

I grew up in her house because my mother died when I was five. As for my father, I was told he left before I was born. That was the entire story. Whenever I tried to ask more, Grandma’s hands would still, her eyes drifting somewhere far away. So I stopped pushing.

She was my home. My anchor. My whole world.

When Tyler proposed years later, Grandma cried harder than I did. She grabbed my hands and said, “I’ve been waiting for this since the day I held you.”

Four months later, she was gone. A quiet heart attack in her sleep.

Packing up her house felt like dismantling gravity itself. Every room carried her imprint. At the back of her closet, behind winter coats and Christmas ornaments, I found the garment bag.