She took a cookie off my plate. “Better bring those too. The lady of the house isn’t going to want you to ruin the décor.”
We headed down the hall to the large kitchen. In the wide hallway with all the intricate Victorian molding, family photos hung on thin wires from the picture rail. The photos were all black and white—my father with Tabitha and their new baby, Tabitha in a posed pregnancy shot, and Tabitha at the beach, Tabitha in the woods, Tabitha on a step in a doorway. Of course, there were no photos of yours truly.
The mouthwatering smell of Crock-Pot meatballs wafted down the hall. “I am going to eat a whole plate of them.”
“All for you,” Bettina said, then frowned. “Literally. People here were complaining that too much of the dishes had avocados, which are apparently not healthy anymore. Who knew?”
“But they’re green,” I protested.
The meatballs looked even better than they smelled.
“I just want to bathe in these,” I said when I opened the lid of the Crock-Pot. I spooned a generous helping of meatballs onto a square plate that was almost as flat as a pancake.
“Crap, crap!” I hissed as the dark red sweet and slightly spicy sauce ran to the edge of the fancy square plate. “I should have gotten a bowl.” I lapped up the sauce on the side of the plate before it could drip onto the white carpet under the kitchen table.
“And this is, of course, our kitchen,” I heard Tabitha say as she waltzed in, her adoring entourage behind her.
“I insisted on marble countertops. I just think a natural stone is better around the baby.” She gave a fake laugh. “You know, new motherhood.”
“Hi Tabitha,” I said mid-lick. “Your kitchen is amazing.”
It was better than amazing. It was drool worthy. It was the kitchen I had always wanted.
Tabitha glared down her nose at me.
“Oh, is that, like, one of your friends from the internship?” one of the sorority sisters asked Tabitha.
My stepmother’s mouth screwed up.
Oh my god, had she not told her friends?
“I’m her stepdaughter,” I said, feeling like I was going to end up on the naughty list for the sheer amount of glee I felt when her sorority sisters all made shocked noises.
“He has a daughter?”
“You never said!”
“Wait,” another sorority sister asked, “why wasn’t she in the wedding?”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“She was busy,” Tabitha cut in. “She was in college. Isn’t that right, Martha?”
“Meredith, actually—well, Merrie for short,” I said with a strained laugh.
“Oh my god, are you, like, the same age?” a sister asked.
“No,” Tabitha said sharply, giving her the evil eye. “I graduated a year before her.”
Her cold gaze swept across the gaggle of young women, daring them to say anything. One poor girl was completely oblivious.
“Wow,” she said in wonder, “your husband is, like, really old!”
“He’s not old,” Tabitha shrieked.
“I’m just gonna take a to-go plate,” I said, grabbing a handful of crab dip-stuffed wontons, cookies, and more meatballs. I was slurping at the sauce, trying to keep it from dripping on me as I walked through the house taking photos. I knew my mom would badger me about it. Also, I needed inspiration porn to make me feel even worse about my life.
You could find a super-hot older guy, I told myself.There are all those sugar baby websites.But did I really want to be with a guy as old as my father?
