After Ellie loses both her parents years apart, Janice, her stepmother, takes over Ellie’s caregiving, dictating her entire life and forcing her to live in the shadows of her stepbrothers. But when her Aunt Jody reveals a secret, Ellie has no choice but to act. After losing my mother at the age of three, my father became the primary person in my life.
Everything in my world revolved around him, as I didn’t have grandparents on either side. We still had my father’s sister, Aunt Jody, around, but she had immigrated a long time ago, and lived oceans away. So, all I knew was my father.
But then, when I first started school, my father brought Janice home, along with her two sons, my soon-to-be stepmother and step-siblings. Initially, everything was fine. Janice treated me well, brushing my hair every night until it was sleek and shiny.
She even wanted me at her and Dad’s wedding. “Oh, Ellie,” she would say, refusing to call me Eleanor, “You have to be my flower girl! Jackson and Avery will be the ring bearers, but you, my sweet girl, I need you to be my flower girl.”
While Janice and my father were preparing for their wedding, Janice kept me involved.
She showed me the color palette she wanted, the flowers she liked, and took the boys and me to taste the wedding cake flavors. “I like the peanut butter cake,” Avery said, wiping the frosting on my dress. “And what do you like, Ellie?” Janice asked.
“Chocolate,” I replied, loving the attention she gave me. As much as I was scared to share my father with our new blended family, I was grateful that Janice wasn’t the evil stepmother I had feared she would be. Still, at the end of the day, I just missed my mother.
But then, just after my sixteenth birthday party, my father began to complain about chest pains. “Oh, Ellie,” he said one day as we were walking through a supermarket, getting every item on Janice’s grocery list. “What’s wrong?” I asked, watching him clutch his chest.
“I’ll be fine, El,” he reassured me when we got home. “I’ve just been overdoing it lately.”
A few weeks later, my father passed away at home — he had a heart issue that didn’t present itself until that day at the supermarket. But my father refused to go to the doctor.
That’s when everything about Janice changed, and she became the evil stepmother I had spent years worrying about. “No, Eleanor,” she said one morning while making breakfast for Jackson and Avery, “I’ve decided that Jackson needs your bedroom. It’s much bigger, and he needs space for his gym equipment.
Your father left behind a lot of money, so I’m going to use it for the boys’ rooms.”
I couldn’t argue. Even if I tried to fight for myself, Janice would never let me hear the end of it. She would go on about how I should be grateful that she kept me in the house.
Some days were civil, and others were loud and full of confrontation. For two years, I let Janice dictate my life. She changed the entire house, tailoring everything to her taste — there were few reminders of life with my father.
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