When Lily returns from a weekend with her dad wearing cheap clothes, her mom discovers her ex’s new wife has been giving Lily’s things to her own daughters. But when they try to transfer Lily out of private school without consent? That’s when the real fight begins.
Lily walked through our front door on a Sunday evening, dragging her weekend bag behind her. She looked smaller somehow. Different.
It took me a moment to realize why. “Hey, sweetheart,” I said, looking up from my laptop. “How was Dad’s?”
She shrugged in the universal teenage gesture that could mean anything.
“That good, huh?” I pressed. “It was fine, Mom. The usual.”
But it clearly wasn’t fine.
The jeans she wore hung loosely around her waist, and the t-shirt had a faded cartoon character I’d never seen before. These weren’t her clothes. “Lily?
Whose clothes are you wearing?”
She looked down and tugged at the hem of the t-shirt. “I dunno. Georgia’s, I guess.”
Georgia was her step-sister.
“Did something happen to your clothes? Where’s your blue sweater?” I asked. “The one we bought last month?”
Another shrug.
“Brianna gives my nice clothes to Georgia and Samantha. Then she gives me the stuff she and Dad buy from Target.”
She said it so casually, like my ex-husband’s new wife redistributing my daughter’s wardrobe was just another weekend routine. Oh, God, was it just another weekend routine?
“Sweetheart, does this happen every time you visit your dad?”
She shook her head. “Not every time, but a lot, I guess.”
I was horrified. Not just at Brianna, but at myself, too, for not noticing this was happening sooner.
Mark and I divorced five years ago. I have primary custody, but Lily spends two weekends a month with him. This arrangement has worked perfectly for all these years.
Recently, Mark married Brianna, who has sole custody of her two daughters from a previous marriage. And everything was still going well, it seemed. Lily got along okay with Georgia and Samantha, and she seemed to like Brianna well enough.
Brianna doesn’t work. Won’t work, actually. She has a degree but claims she wants to focus on being a mom.
So, I assume she bakes cookies with the girls and holds the household together while they live on Mark’s income alone, which isn’t much. Meanwhile, I’ve built a good life for Lily and me. I make decent money, and since it’s just the two of us, I can easily afford to send her to private school and make monthly contributions to her college fund.
Lily gets what she needs without question, and some of what she wants, too. Don’t get me wrong, Lily isn’t spoiled. She keeps her room clean, does her homework, and keeps up with her chores.
She’s a good kid who has to earn a new cell phone or PC game if she wants one. Nothing is simply handed to her, and because of that, she’s never taken any of it for granted. I looked at her now, wearing that bargain-bin outfit, and fought to keep my voice neutral.
“Do you want your clothes back?” I asked. “Because I’ll call Brianna right now…”
Lily shrugged again. “It’s okay.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
