Something inside me hardened instantly.
All I could see was my stepdaughter at six years old, waiting by the window on birthdays that passed without a call. I remembered holding her through nightmares she couldn’t explain. I remembered the school plays, the scraped knees, the bedtime stories—every moment where I showed up while her biological mother disappeared.
“She’s my daughter now,” I said coldly. “You gave up that right.”
I didn’t let her answer. I hung up.
Two days later, my husband told me she had died on the operating table.
I didn’t cry at first. I told myself I had done what I had to do—protected my child from confusion, from reopening wounds. That was my job. That was what a real mother did.
But the silence that followed felt… wrong.
A month later, a package arrived. Small. Carefully wrapped. Addressed to my stepdaughter.
I shouldn’t have opened it. I know that. But something about the handwriting—shaky, deliberate—made my hands tremble before I even realized what I was doing.
