In-laws are usually there to help and make things better, but not for me. This is the story of how I stood up to Linda, who thought I might be mean to my oldest daughter, Tessa. I have two daughters. The first is named Tessa and she is 10 years old. She is very nice and likes to help everyone. The second is named Sadie and she is 4 years old. She is very energetic and loves to ask lots of questions. My husband Grant loves both girls very much, but their mother, Linda, doesn’t feel the same way about Tessa.

Linda cares a lot about making everything look nice on the outside. But if you look a little deeper, you’ll see that she can be very mean and unfriendly, especially to Tessa. The sad thing is that Linda feels this way only because Tessa is not Grant’s “real” daughter. For a long time, I tried to get everyone to get along. Grant would say, “She’s acting like a grown-up. She’ll change someday,” but she never did. Linda liked to tease Tessa. Tessa was a really good girl who never said anything when things went wrong. Maybe she thought it was her fault, but I could see what was going on and got really angry.

Grant didn’t see it the way I did. He loved his mother and thought she was acting a little strange, but I understood better than he did. Sometimes people would say mean things about Tessa’s appearance, like, “Tessa, that dress looks too fancy on you.”

Or they would act like they had forgotten Tessa’s birthday, but they had given her sister Sadie lots of presents instead. Things got really hard after my mother passed away. I felt like everything I knew was suddenly gone and I couldn’t say goodbye. I was so sad that I felt like my heart was breaking and it was hard to even breathe because I missed her so much. We had to travel to another state for a sad event called a funeral, which was very hard on me. I felt so sad that everything around me was like a blurry dream. But I knew I had to think about the girls.

My brain was so heavy with sadness that even the simplest decisions were hard to make. Then, Linda, someone I didn’t really want to help, offered to take care of the girls while we were gone. I didn’t really want that because I knew Tessa wouldn’t feel safe with her, and I didn’t like the idea of leaving Tessa with someone who had been cruel before. I didn’t know what else to do. I was so sad and all my friends were caught up in their own things. I felt so alone and like I couldn’t do anything.

I had to decide whether to leave the girls with Linda or try to find a different solution, which seemed very difficult. Even though I didn’t want to do it, I said yes. After three exhausting days, we walked into the house. The house was strangely quiet, almost too quiet. As I got out of the car, I felt a strange weight on my chest. Linda had left a note on the counter: “I took Sadie to the park. I’ll be back later.” My stomach felt tight, like something wasn’t right. “Where’s Tessa?” I asked quietly, looking around the house. I called out her name, but she didn’t answer.