My Stepmom Destroyed the Skirt I Made from My Late Dads Ties, Karma Knocked on Our Door That Same Night!

She cleared his closet with ruthless speed, stuffing his clothes into trash bags as if disposing of clutter. When I saw her throw his ties—ties he wore religiously, even on casual Fridays—into a black bag, something in me snapped. I begged her to stop. She told me to grow up. When she left the room, I rescued the bag and hid it in my closet. The ties still smelled faintly of his aftershave, a mix of cedar and cheap cologne that instantly brought him back.

Prom season arrived, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Grief weighed on me constantly. But one night, sitting on my bed with that bag of ties open beside me, an idea formed. My father had always believed in showing up, in being present. I wanted him there with me—somehow.

I taught myself to sew.

Night after night, I watched tutorials, practiced stitches, and slowly pieced the ties together into a flowing skirt. Every tie held a memory. The paisley one from his big job interview. The navy tie he wore to my middle school recital. The ridiculous guitar-print tie he wore every Christmas morning while baking cinnamon rolls. The skirt wasn’t perfect. The seams wobbled, the hem dipped unevenly, but it felt alive. When I tried it on, I whispered that he would have loved it.

Carla didn’t.

She laughed when she saw it, calling it ugly and embarrassing. Later, I heard her mutter that I was “playing the orphan for sympathy.” Her words crawled under my skin, making me question myself. Was I clinging too tightly to grief? Or was she simply incapable of understanding love that didn’t benefit her?

The night before prom, I hung the skirt carefully on my closet door. I went to sleep imagining dancing under lights, my dad with me in spirit.

I woke up to devastation.

The room smelled like Carla’s perfume. The closet door was open. The skirt lay on the floor, ripped apart. Seams torn. Ties slashed with scissors. Threads scattered like wounds. I screamed her name. She appeared calmly, coffee in hand, and told me she’d done me a favor. She said my father was dead and that a pile of ties wouldn’t bring him back.

I collapsed, clutching the ruined fabric, shaking with grief and rage.

Carla left for the store, telling me not to cry on the new carpet.

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