I kept my prom dress hidden in the attic for 55 years because I had once promised my high school sweetheart I would marry him in it before he was sent to Vietnam. Then one evening, he appeared at my door. We finally got the wedding we had lost decades ago—but that night, he revealed a secret that made me question the woman I had trusted all my life.
The oldest thing in my house wasn’t the dark wooden piano in the front room or the quilt my grandmother had sewn before I was born.
It was an ivory dress hanging inside a faded garment bag in the attic.
The dress wasn’t expensive.