Richard had been married to their mother, Eleanor, for forty-six years.
She had died from ovarian cancer five years before I met him.
Their family had existed before me.
Traditions had existed before me.
Christmas photographs.
Vacations.
Inside jokes.
Grief.
I did not expect to become their mother.
I was younger than all three of them.
I did not even expect them to like me.
I asked only that they stop treating me as though marrying their father made me morally contagious.
They couldn’t.
At our first Thanksgiving, Rebecca switched my place card so I sat at the far end of the table beside a distant cousin.
At Christmas, Andrew gave me a gold-digging joke disguised as a toast.
Michael once asked Richard whether he had gotten “a medical evaluation” before changing his estate plan.
Richard threw him out of the house.
I begged Richard to invite him back.
