Ashley thought back to when her father remarried, seven years earlier, when she was working her first job and living her own life. She remembered standing at the small ceremony, polite and guarded, unsure where she fit now, watching her dad, Calvin look happy again.
Ashley’s own need for a mother had long since passed. She assumed getting along with her stepmother would be easy. They were all adults, and it should have made things simpler, but it hadn’t. Instead, everything felt careful and restrained, as if every interaction required invisible rules no one ever explained.