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
He looked at the floor.
Finally, he whispered,
“I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you.”
I stared at him.
“And losing her.”
“David.”
His voice cracked.
“I thought the two of you would become closer to each other than either of you were to me.”
The room went silent.
I couldn’t even process what he had just admitted.
“You told me she hated me.”
“I know.”
“You told me she said she couldn’t stand having me in this house.”
“I know.”
“You said you two had some huge argument.”
David looked away.
“There wasn’t really an argument like that.”
My stomach turned.
“What did you do?”
He covered his face for a moment.
Then finally said it.
“I told Chloe that you found her exhausting.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“I told her you wanted the house to yourselves.”
My voice dropped.
“You told a seventeen-year-old girl who had already lost her mother that her father’s new wife didn’t want her around?”
“I panicked.”
“She was a child.”
“I know.”
“And then you told me she hated me.”
“I thought it would blow over.”
“How?”
“I thought eventually I’d fix it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Instead, every year you sent her letters back.”
David said nothing.
“And you sent my gifts back too, didn’t you?”
His silence answered.
I sat down on the rug beside the box.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen birthdays.
Thirteen years of believing I had failed a girl I loved.
“Why now?” I asked.
David finally looked at me.
“Chloe called me last week.”
“Why?”
NEXT PAGE
