The bride asked me to sew her mother into the dress

Dear Delyara, I am an apprentice seamstress, and tonight a bride brought us a small piece of fabric cut from her mother’s sari. Her mother died when she was twelve. The bride wanted the cloth sewn somewhere inside the wedding dress where nobody else could see it. My employer gave the task to me because my stitches are smaller. I placed the faded green silk beneath the lining near her heart. The fabric was old and almost transparent, and I was terrified my needle would tear it. The bride watched without speaking. When I finished, she put the dress on and pressed both palms over the hidden patch. She did not look in the mirror. She said, “Now she will enter before I do.” I wanted to tell her my own mother is alive and that I have ignored three of her calls this week because she keeps asking when I will return home and marry. Instead, I adjusted the hem. The bride left smiling, carrying her dead mother inside the dress. I stayed behind surrounded by pins, thread, and the sudden unbearable knowledge that I still have a mother who is trying to reach me from only one town away.