My Stepdaughter Returned Every Birthday Gift I Sent for 12 Years – In the 13th Year, I Stopped, and a Huge Box from Her Arrived at My Door, and I Went Pale When I Opened It

A crooked birthday cake we attempted for David.

That package returned unopened as well.

Eventually, I tried calling.

The phone rang.

She never answered.

I asked David to please speak to her.

He told me he had.

“She doesn’t want you involved in her life,” he said one night.

I sat on the edge of our bed.

“Did I do something?”

“No, honey.”

“Then why does she hate me?”

“She’s still grieving her mother. She thinks I chose you over her.”

That explanation hurt.

But it made enough sense that I accepted it.

So I stopped asking questions.

I did not stop sending gifts.

A scarf.

A journal.

Earrings.

Something small every birthday.

Every year, they came back.

And every year, I placed the unopened package on the top shelf of the closet.

Maybe next year.

That became my private lie.

Then came birthday number thirteen.

I bought Chloe a silver picture frame.

I wrapped it in blue paper because blue had been her favorite color when she was seventeen.

As I sat on the bedroom floor holding it, something inside me finally gave up.

I realized I didn’t even know whether she still liked blue.

I barely knew anything about the woman she had become.

She was thirty years old now.

A stranger.

I whispered to myself,

“She’s been telling you for twelve years that she doesn’t want this. You need to listen.”

So I slowly unwrapped the frame.

I put it in the closet with all the other gifts that had come back.

For the first time, I sent nothing.

I didn’t tell David.

I simply went downstairs and made dinner.

Three days passed.

Oddly enough, I felt lighter.

Then the doorbell rang.

A delivery driver stood outside.

“Are you Alice?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve got a heavy package for you.”

He unloaded a huge cardboard box.

It took both him and David to bring it inside.

Then I saw the sender’s name.

Chloe.

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