For years, I kept asking myself what I had done to make my stepdaughter shut me out of her life.

Eventually, I convinced myself I would probably never know.

Then one afternoon, a box appeared in my living room.

And everything I believed about the last twelve years fell apart.

The box sat in the center of the rug like it was alive.

My name was written across the top in handwriting I hadn’t seen in more than a decade.

Alice.

The letters were neat and looping.

I recognized the way she shaped the capital A immediately.

Chloe.

My hands started shaking.

Three days earlier, I had made one of the hardest decisions of my life.

For the first time in thirteen years, I had not sent my stepdaughter a birthday present.

And now she had sent me this.

My husband, David—Chloe’s father—stood behind the couch staring at the package.

His face had gone strangely pale.

“Alice,” he said quietly. “Maybe you should wait before opening it.”

I looked up.

“Wait for what?”

He didn’t answer.

That should have told me everything.

But I still didn’t understand.

So let me go back.

I’m fifty-eight now.

I married David twelve years ago.

At the time, I honestly thought love had passed me by.

Then David came along and called me his second chance.

At our small backyard wedding, he whispered it into my hair, and I believed him completely.

Chloe was seventeen.

Her mother had passed away several years earlier.

And from the beginning, I understood something important:

I was not there to replace her mother.

I never wanted that role.

I simply wanted a place of my own in Chloe’s life.

A chair at the table.

Nothing more.

But being a stepmother was never going to be simple.

At first, though, Chloe and I actually got along.

I cooked meals she liked.

Baked ziti.

That ridiculous boxed macaroni and cheese she loved.

I asked about school and friends without interrogating her.

I gave her room when she wanted it.

And when she wanted company, I was there.

Sometimes she laughed at my terrible jokes.

Once she even asked me how I made pie crust so flaky.

For a while, I thought we might be okay.

Then something changed.

Almost overnight, Chloe became distant.

At dinner, she barely spoke to me.

She avoided being alone in the same room.

One night, while David and I were doing dishes, I asked,

“Is Chloe all right? She barely looked at me tonight.”

David shrugged.

“She’s seventeen. School, boys, grief. Don’t take everything personally.”

“Did something happen?”

“I’ll talk to her.”

That became the pattern.

I noticed something.

I asked David.

He told me he would handle it.

Then he came back with some explanation that somehow made me feel guilty for asking

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