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She said it like flipping a switch: “You’re not my dad.”
The words didn’t spark anger. They hollowed me out. Ten years of scraped knees, late-night fevers, bike lessons, school plays, and heartbreaks—and still, in her eyes, I wasn’t “Dad.” Just “Mike.”
That night, I didn’t let it slide like I usually did. I drew a line.
“If that’s how you feel,” I said as calmly as I could, “then you don’t get to treat me like a punching bag and expect me to smile through it.”
Her eyes widened. She wasn’t used to me pushing back. She rolled her eyes, slammed her bedroom door, and that was the end of the scene.
I stayed at the kitchen table, staring into a cold cup of coffee, feeling the kind of heaviness that sticks in your bones. My wife, Claire, found me there.
“She’s hurting,” she said gently. “At her dad, at me… maybe at you. Because you stayed.”
I nodded, but understanding didn’t make it hurt any less. I slept maybe two hours that night.
The next morning I skipped the usual routine—no pancakes, no goodbye at the door. For days we circled each other like strangers sharing the same roof.
Then the school called. Missed assignments, slipping grades, two classes skipped. It wasn’t like her. Claire looked furious and terrified all at once.
That night, I slipped a sticky note under her door: Want to talk? No lectures. Just listening.
An hour later, she stood in my office doorway, arms crossed, chin tilted high, eyes guarded.
“I’m failing chemistry,” she said flatly. “And I hate it. And I don’t care.”
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