The Message I Wasn't Meant to Receive

Tonight I learned something I should have known years ago. My stepmother died in July of 2022. I didn’t hear it from my father. I didn’t hear it from family. I found out because of collateral drama — the kind that spreads like wildfire in a tavern when someone knocks over a lantern and walks away pretending it wasn’t them. My sister sent some vague, cryptic message to my mother — nothing direct, nothing clear, just enough to set off alarms. My mom, already carrying her own history with her, spiraled into worry and called me in tears. Four years they haven’t spoken. Four years of silence since the hospital chaos, the Narcan incident, the fire alarm stunt, the eviction from the same building my mother still lives in. A trail of broken doors and scorched bridges. And buried inside all of that noise — like a hidden clause in a cursed scroll — was the truth: my stepmother had been gone for three years. And my father never told me. Now here’s the strange part. I’m not devastated because I adored her. Our relationship was complicated. There were moments of warmth, sure. But what mattered most was simple: she made my father happy. He loved her. That was her role in my story — not as a villain, not as a saint — but as someone who steadied him.