Stepmother

I’d spent months fantasizing about her in silence. That afternoon, during the lesson, she looked up from the book and said: You need to be more careful with the bathroom door.

When I went down to the library that afternoon, I had no idea my stepmother and her imposing partner had already decided what kind of man they were going to make of me.

“It’s only a handjob,” he promised her. But her husband was coming home that very night and the two of them were still tangled in the sheets, unable and unwilling to stop.

What happened that night between Lorena and me was never supposed to come out. But the scream from the other side of the wall told me it was already too late.

I found her in a bikini filming videos by the pool. Dad’s new wife. Eight years younger than me. And she thought she could order me around.

The old neighbor gave me the betrayal photo before I said goodbye. I could only think about Sofía’s door and whether she’d let me back into her house.

When she walked into her room naked except for the blouse, those white hips swaying, I knew I would never sleep in that house again without thinking of her.

She was twenty-five and, on paper, his stepmother. Dinner began with seafood and white wine, and neither of them planned to end it at his place.

I watched her get out of the car to brush crumbs from her skirt, and without knowing it, I knew at that instant we still had many kilometers left and very few excuses.

He had gone weeks without news of her since discovering what had happened between his stepmother and him. When he came through the door, he carried a suitcase and an unreadable expression.

My father had been away for two days. The girls were asleep upstairs. And Elena, barefoot on the sofa, looked at me as if she’d been waiting for this moment all night.

I came back from months in Patagonia and found her sitting in the kitchen at one in the morning, glass in hand, with that look that promised a fight.

Four days remained until my father returned. Four nights to decide how to tell him his wife was sleeping in my arms in his own bed.

I was the impeccable stepmother, the woman who made the rules. But when my stepson appeared naked before me, I knew my rules were made of paper.

When they told me I was their property, I thought it was an empty threat. But when Celestina appeared with the crop in her hand, I knew there was no turning back.

The house was empty and I had all the time in the world. I never imagined that looking for a charger would lead me to my father’s and stepmother’s secret life.

Friday yoga started as a silent game of looks and ended with her body pressed against mine in my father’s game room.

I’d been under the same roof as my father’s wife for four days when she left her bedroom door ajar and told me, without words, to come upstairs.