The day before my fiftieth birthday, my deceased father came to me in a dream and told me, “Don’t wear the dress from your husband.”
I woke up in a cold sweat. It was true. My husband had recently bought me a dress, and when the seamstress brought it back, I cut the lining open and froze in horror.
Olivia Sutton, known to everyone as Liv, woke with a sharp gasp, as if she’d been violently ejected from dark water onto the surface. Her heart pounded so hard she thought it might leap right out of her chest. She gulped at the air, feeling the damp cotton of her nightgown clinging to her back, soaked with sweat.
Her hand fumbled for the lamp switch. The room flooded with a soft, warm light. Next to her, on his side of the king-size bed, Marcus “Mark” Sutton slept peacefully.
He was lying on his side, turned toward the wall, and didn’t even stir at her sudden awakening. Liv listened to his even breathing, trying to calm herself, but she was trembling inside. A dream.
It was only a dream. But why was it so terrifying? She carefully slipped out of bed, trying not to wake her husband, and walked on unsteady legs to the kitchen.
Her hands shook as she poured water into a glass. She took several sips, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t budge. She sank into a chair at the table, dropped her head into her hands, and closed her eyes—only to snap them open again.
The vision from the dream instantly reappeared. It was her father. Her daddy.
The man who had died from a heart attack three years ago. He’d stood in the doorway of their master bedroom exactly as she remembered him, in his favorite gray sweater—the one she had knitted for him for his sixtieth birthday. His face was serious, even stern, and his eyes stared right at her with piercing alarm.
“Liv,” he said softly. But his voice had sounded so clear, as if he were truly standing there. “Don’t wear the dress from your husband.
You hear me? Don’t wear that dress.”
He repeated the words three times, never taking his eyes off her, and then slowly dissolved into the darkness, as if he had never been there at all. Liv woke with a scream that got trapped somewhere in her throat and never made it out.
She rubbed her temples, trying to banish the haunting image. What nonsense, she told herself. Just a dream.
