When I first met my now-wife, she had a 3-year-old daughter. From the beginning, I loved and cared for her like she was my own. By the time she turned four, she started calling me “Daddy,” completely on her own. Her biological father has always been inconsistent—sometimes showing up, sometimes disappearing for weeks or months at a time. When she’s with us,
she refers to him by his first name, which says a lot.Last night, while she was visiting him, I got a text from her asking if I could come pick her up. I could tell something was wrong. When I got there, I found her cradling her arm, which was visibly swollen and clearly causing her a lot of pain.