Chapter 1 - The Maid She Brought to the Lake
My stepmom invited me on a lakeside girls' trip so I could wait on her friends like the hired help—then Dad slipped something into her bag that flipped the whole weekend around.
I'm sixteen, and my stepmother, Marlene, had never once pretended she wanted to be my friend.
So when she asked me to come along on a weekend camping trip with four of her closest friends, some stupid, hopeful part of me thought maybe she was finally trying.
"It'll be good for us," she told my dad in the kitchen, her voice all warm and easy. "Just us girls. Nora and I might actually get a chance to bond."
I should have known better.
We'd barely parked at Cedar Hollow Lake before the folding chairs came out and the wine bottles got uncorked. Marlene and her friends dropped into their seats in a half circle facing the water, and I was handed a job. Unload the coolers. Get the fire going. Set out the plates.
Nobody moved to help.
After dinner, Marlene tipped her head toward the stack of greasy pans and plates piled on the picnic table.
"Get all that washed before bed," she said. "I'm not having raccoons tearing through the campsite at two in the morning."
I washed them in the dark, crouched by the water spigot with a flashlight clamped between my teeth.
The next morning she woke me by rattling the poles of my tent. Everyone wanted coffee. Everyone wanted eggs.
By lunchtime I had cooked two full meals, hauled three armloads of firewood, scrubbed the grill grates, walked the whole site picking up their trash, and marched a slow lap around the chairs with a can of bug spray because Marlene announced the mosquitoes were "ruining the whole mood."
One of her friends, a woman named Bev, laughed so hard she nearly spilled her drink.
"Marlene, you didn't bring a stepdaughter. You brought a maid!"
Marlene took a slow sip from her cup and smiled.
"Well," she said. "It's good preparation for real life."
My face went hot.
That was the moment it landed. There had never been a bonding trip. There had never been a plan to get closer. She'd brought me here to work.
That evening I was back at the spigot, elbow-deep in another tub of dishwater, while the five of them sat around the fire laughing. Then Marlene's phone rang.
She looked at the screen and her whole face changed. Soft. Sweet.
"Hi, honey!"
She wandered a few steps from the fire. They talked for a minute or two, and then I heard her laugh in a way I hadn't heard all weekend — light, delighted, girlish.
"Oh — honey, I almost forgot," Dad's voice carried, just loud enough. "I slipped a little surprise into your pink bag before you left. Take a look when you get a chance."
Marlene actually squealed.
"You didn't!"
She practically ran to her tent. Her friends piled in after her, laughing, betting out loud that my dad had bought her a bracelet, maybe earrings.
A few seconds later she came back out.
She was holding something in both hands, and her face had gone a deep, blotchy red.
"What the hell is this?"
Nobody was laughing now.
Marlene stared down at the thing my father had put in her bag. Then her head snapped up, and she was looking straight at me.
"Did you know about this?"
"I don't even know what you're talking about."
She crossed the campsite and shoved it at me.
May you like
And when I finally saw what my dad had left for her — and read the note tucked inside — I understood that he'd known all along exactly what Marlene had planned for this weekend, and he'd decided to teach her a lesson she wouldn't forget.
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