He was the boy who carried my books before it was cool to be kind, who learned the names of my little cousins, who sat with my grandmother and listened to the same three stories like he’d never heard them.
He enlisted in the Marines the summer after he graduated, a year ahead of me.
The night before he left for boot camp, we sat on the tailgate of his truck, and he made me a promise.
“Wherever they send me,” he said, “I will be home to take you to your senior prom. Dress blues and everything. We’re getting our dance, Hailey. You have my word.”
A Carter, he always said, keeps his word.
For a year I held onto that promise through every letter and every short, crackling phone call from the other side of the world.
I bought the dress in October — a deep navy blue, because he said once that blue was the color of the best day of his life, the day I said yes to him.
