Not because I didn’t love him.
I did.
More than I knew how to explain.
But when you’re a child and your family changes, labels can feel complicated. There is your biological father. There is the man who enters your mother’s life. And then there is the person who actually shows up when life gets difficult.
For me, that person was Daniel.
He married my mother when I was six years old.
I still remember standing beside my mother at the small ceremony, wearing a dress I hated and holding a bouquet that was almost bigger than my arms.
Daniel knelt beside me afterward.
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