I started calling her Mom.
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***
Two years later, I was playing in my room when Meredith walked in. She looked… wrong. Like she’d forgotten how to breathe. She kneeled in front of me, and when she took my hands, hers were like ice.
“Sweetheart. Daddy isn’t coming home.”
I blinked at her. “From work?”
Her lips started to tremble. “At all.”
The funeral was a blur of black coats and the smell of too many flowers. People kept leaning down, patting my shoulder, telling me how sorry they were.
“Sweetheart. Daddy isn’t coming home.”
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As the years went by, the story about Dad’s death stayed the same.
“It was a car accident,” Meredith would say. “Nothing anyone could have done.”
When I was ten, I started getting curious.
“Was he tired? Was he speeding?”
“It was an accident,” Meredith repeated.
I never once suspected there was more to it than that.
The story about Dad’s death stayed the same.
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Eventually, Meredith remarried. I was 14 then.
I looked her in the eye and said, “I already have a dad.”
She leaned in close and took my hand. “No one is replacing him. This just means you get more people who love you.”
I searched her face for a lie, but her eyes were clear and honest.
When my little sister was born, Meredith reached for me first.
“Come meet your sister,” she said.
I searched her face for a lie.
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That small act reassured me that I still belonged.
When my brother came along two years after that, I was the one holding the bottle while Meredith finally got a chance to shower.
By the time I hit 20, I thought I had my life story figured out. It was a bit tragic, sure, but the facts were clear.
One mother died giving me life. One father had until a random accident took him away. One stepmother stepped up and became the anchor I needed. Simple.
But that nagging curiosity never really went away.
