“Like your stepsister?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Like my fucking stepsister,” I said.
“That why you guys didn’t get along? Because she did something with her intelligence and you didn’t?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “We didn’t get along because everyone assumed she was intelligent.”
“Why’d they do that?” he asked.
“Because Stella was always the girl with her nose in a book underneath the tree,” I said.
“Wow. You hate your stepsister because she read instead of sucked dicks all through high school,” he said, chuckling. “What a bitch.”
“Are you going to keep telling me about this weekend or not?” I asked.
“Actually, I got somethin’ goin’ in the back I need to check on. Raincheck for the stories?” he asked.
“Remind me to ask you what the hell it is you’re working on. It smells very sweet,” I said.
“Will do. Listen, if I were you—”
“Here we go,” I said, sighing.
“If I were you, I’d recognize the fact that Stella just lost her father. You play it off with your jokes and distractions, but I know you’re in pain. And you know I’m here for you. But, she just lost her dad. Go see her,” he said.
“And do what? Take her out for food and act like we’ve been talking for the past nine years?” I asked.
“That’d be a nice start. Good luck, man!”
“I’m not going and seeing my stepsister, Todd,” I said.
“Let me know how it goes!” he yelled back at me.
Chapter Two
Stella
Walking into the house made my hands shake. Even though my father built and owned his own medical supplies company, Harte To Heart, he still lived a very modest life. I was thankful he found a woman like my stepmother. Someone who enjoyed him instead of the money his company brought in, and it afforded him the ability to jet them off anywhere and everywhere they wished. They didn’t spend a lot of money on houses or cars or property taxes, and it gave him the ability to show me how a relationship really worked.
My father and birth mother divorced when I was young. I don’t remember any of the fighting or the breakup, but I do remember the moment my father won sole custody of me. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why I couldn’t go with my mother. I remember kicking and screaming in court, begging and reaching out for my mom while my father held me close and walked out. I could remember the lifeless pain in my mother’s eyes — how sunken in they were and how pale her skin was.
For all my young life, I’d convinced myself that taking me away from her killed my mother. She died when I was 12, and I cursed my father for taking me from her. I told him if he would’ve let me stay with her, she would’ve been just fine.
Being a girl, I needed a mother more than I needed my father. I felt the loss of my mom acutely. So, when he married my stepmother, I grew very close to her. Closer than most stepchildren probably get to their stepparent.
It wasn’t until I was 18 that my father sat me down and told me everything. He shared about my mother’s drug addiction. How she was diagnosed with postpartum depression and was too proud to get help for it. She sought solace in the bottoms of bottles of booze, and in the pills she convinced the doctor to keep prescribing for her cesarean section pain. He told me she was a wonderful woman until the drugs and alcohol took over. She allowed her pride to step so far into the way that it resulted in my neglect.
I’d never cried so hard in my father’s arms until that day when I apologized for how I treated him as a child.
Now, I was walking through their meager little home. I left the door open to air out the musky smell wafting around my head, but soon the walls of the home drew me in. Its three bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths brought back memories of my stepmother and I cooking in the kitchen while my father worked in his office. Memories of my father surprising me with another book I could read under the massive weeping willow that sat next to the lake on our property.
Memories of always fighting with my idiotic stepbrother over useless shit.
I ran my hands over the delicate blue my stepmother convinced my father to use on the hallway walls. I could smell her sea cotton perfume wafting in the corners as I rounded into the kitchen. Tears rose in my eyes as I watched memories of us dance in my vision. I could see my jet black hair bobbing against my shoulders as she lifted me up to let me stir the cake batter. I could see her showing me how to accurately cook rice, spiced with a bit of pepper and butter. I smiled at the memory of her throwing open the double doors to the backyard, watching me run to the weeping willow with my newest book while her pies cooled on the windowsill.
But my footsteps stopped when I found myself at the entryway to my father’s office.
The smell of his earthy cologne coupled with the reminiscence of his cinnamon cigars smacked me directly in the face. I closed my eyes, listening for the scuffling of his patent leather shoes against the kitchen floor. I could hear the kiss he planted on my stepmother’s cheek just before he rounded the corner to head for his office.