I Won’t Kick My Stepdaughter Out—But Only If She Obeys My Three Rules

She’s been back, occasionally—holidays, birthdays—but things have never been the same. She and Nicole are polite. Distant. The bridge Nicole tried to build with words and rules never fully formed.

Still, Nicole keeps the letters.

Every Sunday note, folded neatly in a shoebox under her bed. There are only five of them. But she rereads them sometimes.

In one, Kayla wrote: “I don’t know how to live in a place where I feel like I don’t belong. I’m trying. But I don’t know if it’s enough.”

Nicole reads that one the most.

She still hopes.

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