How to be a Stepmother

There are two ways to avoid being stuck in my position: one, you don’t marry a man who already has a daughter, and two, you do not fall in love with that man’s daughter.

I know, sounds crazy, but before you judge, I will begin with a short story of my life. I am no saint, and calling me one would even make the Devil shake his head in disgrace, but nor am I a demon with such regard that the heavens would deny thy passage through these Pearly Gates in a way that simply states, “You shall not pass go, you shall not collect two hundred dollars”. That aside, I am not devoted to these figures in the least, it is quite the opposite, actually. My belief in religion is as good as my belief in the Easter Bunny, that is to say, I hold the Easter Bunny near the negatives in my thermometer of trust. It was this exact lack of faith that allowed me to meet him.

I didn’t love him the way Juliet may have loved Romeo, but I did feel a fondness for him that would make me refute with any sin. His eyes would glitter with every glance, his smile would dance across his lips with a certain gracefulness that I found myself attracted to. Deep dimples made every abyss I was sent to seem like a small dip encountered before driving up a hill, and that is because his dimples were deep, not because the abysses I was sent to were not. To say the least, I was attracted to him, and it turned out, he felt the same way about me.

But, alas, this man was married, and had a child that was half a decade younger than I. I simply became friends with him, understanding that I had no right to get involved in his marriage, and I didn’t want his daughter to suffer. He also moved away: far away. So you can imagine that the day I received a text from him, seven years later, my response was automatic:

‘Where?’