My Stepmother…

Estate.

That word should have sounded ridiculous. It didn’t.

Wesley leaned back and studied me for half a second before looking away, giving me privacy even in the middle of concern.

“Would you like water?”

I nodded again.

A bottle appeared from the console. He unscrewed it before handing it to me, probably because my hands were shaking too badly to manage it.

I drank too fast and coughed.

“Slow,” he said.

The word was gentle enough that my eyes burned.

No one had spoken gently to me in months.

No one had spoken gently to me, period, since before my father died.

My real mother had died when I was six. Brain aneurysm. One moment she was making grilled cheese in our kitchen. Two days later she was gone. After that it was just Dad and me for a while—Little League games even though I hated softball, Saturday pancakes, old country songs on the radio, him trying his best.

Then he married Darlene.

At first she was all frosted lipstick and casseroles and sweet tea in glass pitchers. She called me honey in front of people and corrected my posture at church. She told everyone how lucky she was to be getting an instant daughter.

The instant part was true.

The daughter part never was.

By the time Dad died, I already knew how to stay out of her line of sight. How to keep quiet. How to scrub counters until my fingers cracked. How to answer “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” even when she accused me of things I didn’t do.

Then the woods.

Then the pregnancy.

Then the locked door.

I pressed the blanket tighter around my shoulders.

Wesley watched the road ahead. In the clean morning light slipping through the tinted windows, I could see details I hadn’t noticed outside. Beneath the dirt smudges, he was probably in his late fifties or early sixties. Strong jaw, silver at the temples, tired eyes that had seen too much and learned not to waste words.

“You said you’d explain,” I whispered.

He turned toward me. “I did.”

The SUV moved smoothly onto the highway. Pine trees blurred past.