On the day Stephanie is set to marry the love of her life, a man from her past shatters everything she thought she knew. As secrets unravel and loyalties are tested, she’s forced to confront the difference between the family we’re born into… and the ones who choose to stay.
I grew up believing that my father died when I was eight years old.
There wasn’t a funeral or a grave, and there was absolutely no explanation of what had really happened to him.
I only remember my mother looking at me carefully, and then uttering one sentence:
“He’s gone now, Stephanie, sweetheart. Let it go. Let Dad go.”
So…
I did.
People asked sometimes — teachers, neighbors, and even a girl at school who had just lost her own dad and wanted to trade grief like stickers.
I always said the same thing: “He died.” Like I understood what it meant.
My mother, Karen, never kept photos of him around the house. There were no framed memories, no bedtime stories about their early years together, and not even a date circled on the calendar to remind us when he left.
She said that remembering him hurt too much.
Eventually, I stopped asking.
Eventually, I stopped wondering if the silence was protecting me from something or just erasing him altogether.
A year later, she married Dan.
Dan didn’t fill silences with stories or pat my shoulder when I cried. He didn’t show up with surprise birthday gifts or try to win me over with jokes the way other stepdads on TV did.
But he showed up, and eventually, that meant something.
“I can take you to the dentist after school,” he said once, back when I was twelve and still convinced he was the enemy.
“I don’t need you to,” I muttered, not looking up from the couch.
I wanted him to rise to meet my anger, but Dan never did.
He became the person who waited outside the nurse’s office when I had the flu. The person who figured out how to fix the leaky kitchen tap without being asked.
And the person who handed me $20 in passing, always pretending it was just for snacks when he knew it would go toward my prom dress.
I fought him harder because I didn’t know how to admit that he was becoming part of me.
“I’m not your dad,” he said once, when I accused him of trying too hard.
“No, but you act like you are.”
Dan paused for a second, then nodded.
Everything changed after that conversation.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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