My mother died when I was 12, and her wedding dress was the one thing I’d saved for my future wedding. So when my dad’s fiancée stole it, wore it herself, and claimed it looked better on her than on my mother, I knew I couldn’t let her get away with it. She had no idea what was coming!
The autumn light slanted through my apartment window, falling across the small jewelry box on my desk.
I folded another sweater into my duffel bag. I was heading home for my father’s wedding to Susan, a woman he got engaged to a few years ago.
She was 10 years younger than him, and we never really got along, but I kept the peace for Dad’s sake.
I didn’t know it then, but Susan had already done something that would put us at loggerheads once I got home.
I glanced at the framed photo by my bed.
My mother smiled back at me, young and bright, her dark hair catching sunlight on what must have been an ordinary afternoon.
She died of cancer when I was 12.
I was 21 now, and some days the grief still felt fresh.
Her wedding dress was at my father’s house, sealed in a preservation box on the top shelf of my old closet. I had promised myself I would wear it someday, in her honor.
My phone buzzed. Dad’s name lit up the screen.
“Just packing now,” I said. “I’ll be there before dinner.”
“Good, good. Susan’s been running around like a tornado. She’s been organizing the upstairs rooms, getting everything ready for guests.”
I paused, a sweater half-folded in my hands. “Organizing what, exactly?”
“Oh, you know her. She likes things tidy. Don’t worry about it.”
I forced a small laugh. “Okay, Dad. See you tonight.”
After we hung up, I stood there for a long moment, staring at nothing.
Susan was ambitious, the kind of woman who walked into a room and immediately decided what needed to change.
After she moved into the house, she changed everything. The curtains. The dishes. Even the throw pillows my mother had picked out.
Looking back, changing the furniture wasn’t what I should have been worried about.
I never said a word about Susan’s changes to the house.
Maybe things would’ve been different if I’d spoken up sooner, but my father seemed lighter again, and that was worth more to me than matching coffee mugs.
Besides, I was in college. It wasn’t really my home anymore, and I didn’t want to impose.
“He deserves to be happy,” I had told my best friend once. “I can live with new pillows.”
What happened next changed everything… continues on the next page.
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