"These kids are going to be the death of me. At least this one's ours—I can actually discipline her. If she were like her brother and sister, I'd lose ten years off my life!"
Dad thought for a moment, a hint of worry in his voice.
"You don't think something's wrong, do you? That she's in some kind of trouble?"
Mom waved him off.
"What trouble? Rita's from my hometown. She'll take good care of her. If you ask me, that girl's having the time of her life!"
But Mom, your hometown friend isn't exactly reliable.
My family was strange.
Ethan was Dad's son. Chloe was Mom's daughter.
After they married, they had me.
They'd both been through marriages that left scars. Dad's first wife got sick—really sick—and killed herself so she wouldn't be a burden. Mom's first husband died in a truck accident on a rainy night, trying to earn more money for the family.
Both of them died when the love was still raw.
Mom and Dad didn't marry for love. They married so their children could have a complete family.
On the wall hung a framed piece of calligraphy. It read: Treat them as your own.
Mom and Dad only had eyes for each other's kids.
If you buy my daughter a new dress today, I'll get your son new shoes tomorrow. However good you are to my child, I'll be just as good to yours.
Perfectly balanced.
They hadn't planned on having another baby.
But as Ethan and Chloe got older, they developed minds of their own. They weren't afraid of their biological parents anymore—they were getting out of control.
Mom could manage Ethan. Dad could handle Chloe. That was the only way to get them to listen.
Being a stepparent is hard. You can't discipline too harshly, not unless you want people calling you an abuser.
I can't come down hard on my stepkid, but surely I can do it to my own flesh and blood.
That's the kind of thinking I was born into.
Even my name was a reminder for them to treat each other's children well.
Lily Harper.
A surname from each parent. A lazy, thoughtless name.
I was their second child together, sandwiched between Ethan and Chloe like the filling in a cookie—present, but easily overlooked.
They'd already gotten used to loving the older two more. What was left for me was barely anything at all.
But whenever Ethan or Chloe messed up? I was the one who got screamed at. Hit.
The louder I cried, the longer they'd behave.
Mom called it "killing the chicken to scare the monkeys."