Chapter 4: The Past Isn’t Dead

My husband, Mark Parker, is on his second marriage.

He’s always had that charming, all-American dad energy. The kind that looks good in a golf shirt and knows how to grill a mean burger at a backyard BBQ.

Natalie is his daughter with his ex-wife. They divorced when Natalie was three.

At the time, Rachel was already secretly pregnant with another man’s child. She didn’t want Natalie and specifically demanded the $6,000 car registered under Mark’s name.

She didn’t ask for the house, because it belonged to Mark’s parents.

Even then, Mark’s pride wouldn’t let him fight. He signed the papers, handed over the keys, and never looked back—or so he said.

When I married Mark, Natalie was already in second grade. She lived with her grandmother, always messy, with snot often smeared across her cheeks.

Because she looked so unkempt, other kids at school bullied her.

They’d snicker behind her back, calling her names and leaving her out at recess. My heart broke for her, even then.

After I married in, I couldn’t get pregnant for the first two years, so I treated Natalie as my own daughter. Her personality gradually brightened.

I enrolled her in expensive tutoring, soccer camp, art lessons, and Girl Scouts. After school, I helped her with homework and exercised with her.

Our fridge was papered with her artwork and spelling tests. I remember teaching her to ride a bike in the park, clapping when she finally made it down the sidewalk without falling.

Her grades went from the bottom in the early years to consistently top three by fourth and fifth grade.

All the money I’d saved before marriage was spent like water, but the Parker family never once asked how much a single extracurricular class cost.

Her grandmother only mocked me for making a fuss and causing trouble for her precious granddaughter—as if I was tormenting her darling.

"You spoil her," she’d mutter, shaking her head. I’d bite my tongue and keep writing checks.

In the third year of marriage, I got pregnant.

Mark was overjoyed, and my mother-in-law looked pleased.

But while Natalie was playing with a remote control car, she drove it to my feet, tripping me just as I was carrying hot soup in both hands.

I miscarried early in the pregnancy and suffered severe burns on my arm. The hospital smell clung to me for weeks. I hid my bandaged arm in family photos.

Natalie was so scared she cried, throwing herself into my arms, apologizing through tears that she hadn’t meant it—she just didn’t see me coming out of the kitchen when she pressed the remote.

That year, she was ten, her face streaked with tears and full of fear.

I believed her.

I held her close, telling her it was just an accident. Maybe I wanted to believe her, because the alternative—that she’d done it on purpose—was too much for me to bear.

But after that, I never got pregnant again.

I didn’t push it, because I truly felt Natalie was my daughter.

Back then, she was very clingy, always following me around, calling “Mom, Mom” over and over. When I was busy, she’d rest her chin on me, looking up at my face. She’d sneak into my bed at night, clutching her stuffed bear, whispering secrets she never told anyone else.

Her little arms would wrap around my waist while I cooked, her voice piping up with endless questions. Sometimes, that memory feels like it belongs to someone else’s life.

But my husband’s sister and mother-in-law always found ways to bring up her biological mom, Rachel, whenever we were happiest, saying how much her mom had loved her when she was little.

It was like a shadow that never left the room. They’d slip in a story about Rachel’s singing or her beauty, always when Natalie’s eyes were on me.

Later, Rachel started taking Natalie to her place on weekends, under the pretense of letting her visit her child.

Gradually, Natalie grew more and more disgusted with me.

The laughter faded, replaced by sighs and slammed doors. She began to roll her eyes when I suggested anything—homework, dinner, even a hug.

By the time she started middle school, that dislike had turned to hatred.