For illustrative purposes only
When Chloe turned eighteen, my first year as her stepmother, I bought her a thin gold necklace with a tiny star charm — she used to doodle stars in the corners of her homework at our kitchen table. I wrapped it myself, drove it to the post office, told myself she’d at least open it even if she didn’t call.
Two weeks later it came back: Return to Sender, in blocky black marker. I stood in the laundry room and cried into a dish towel so David wouldn’t hear.
At twenty-one, I sent a soft leather bag for her first real job. Returned. At twenty-five, a cookbook — I remembered how she used to love baking, chocolate chip cookies, a lopsided birthday cake for her dad, laughing at my terrible frosting job. Returned, unopened, like all the others.
After the fifth or sixth package came back, I asked David to talk to her — to tell her I’d love for her to visit. He came back and said they’d had a terrible fight. “She said she can’t stand having you in this house, Alice. She thinks I chose you over her.”
I sat on the edge of our bed and couldn’t speak. “Did I do something?”
“No, honey. She’s grieving her mother. It isn’t about you.”
“But she was warm at first. She used to help me chop onions.”
“Kids change. Please stop taking it so personally.”
So I stopped asking questions. But I didn’t stop sending gifts. A scarf. A journal. A little pair of earrings. Every year, the box came back, and every year I put it in the closet with the others and told myself: maybe next year.
Then came year thirteen. I sat on our bedroom floor with a small silver photo frame in my lap, wrapped in blue paper because that had been her favorite color at seventeen. Maybe it wasn’t anymore. Maybe I didn’t know a single true thing about the thirty-year-old stranger who wore my last name on paper and nothing else.
