This isn't a short one, and I hope to make a few more chapters for it; assuming everyone enjoys it and wants to read more. Unfortunately, life doesn't provide a lot of extra time for writing these days, but I'll do my best to do it right.
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Frustrated Step-Daughter
"I hate it here!" Cassie yelled, as she flung herself into her bed. Stuffed Disney characters tumbled to the ground as if attempting to get out of the way.
"Cassie, we need to go see someone." My wife pleaded. Her voice was clearly restrained with great effort.
"You just hate me!" Cassie said, as tears came in earnest.
"No one hates you." My wife said, her control beginning to show cracks. "We love you. We just want you to be happy." She added, attempting to rub Cassie's back.
Cassie twisted away and threw blankets overtop of herself. "I don't want to be touched." She sobbed.
"I can't help you if you don't tell me what's wrong."
Cassie ignored her. This had become a semi-regular event in our home. Every couple weeks we would ask Cassie to put down her phone or do something helpful around the house and she would go into a complete melt-down. Sometimes Eileen could get her to talk a bit through sobs but her answers and reasons were always made up on the spot to appease my wife.
I stood in the doorway, watching Eileen attempting to get through to her. She kept peppering Cassie with one thing after another as she often did when she was frustrated.
"Just go away!" Cassie yelled suddenly, tears streaming down her face. That set Eileen off. She'd had it.
"Cassie, you're eighteen!" She yelled back. "Acting like this is ridiculous. You're not ten anymore." She added, brushing past me at the door.
Cassie cried all the harder.
I love my wife dearly, and I know she'd been pushed to the breaking point far too many times over the last couple of years; but her constant head-on approach to conflict made parenting more difficult at times.
It was most often up to me to diffuse these situations, as I would listen calmly and wait for her to be ready to talk.
I decided to talk to my wife first. Walking down the hall I entered our bedroom and closed the door. Eileen sat on the edge of our king-sized bed, staring at the floor.
She looked up as I entered. Instantly, Eileen began to vent.
"I just don't know what to do about her!" She said, raising her palms and shrugging. "She won't talk to me." She added.
"What happened?" I asked.
"What do you mean what happened?" She asked, incredulously. "What ever happens? I asked her to put the dishes away like fifteen times. She just kept staring at her phone."
"And then?"
"Then I said I'd take the phone away, and she stormed away up to her room."
I wrapped my arms around my wife, pulling her in close to my chest. She relaxed somewhat.
"Can you talk to her?" She asked after a while. "I don't know what to say anymore, but she'll usually talk to you."
"I'll try."
Five minutes later, I was standing at Cassie's door again, listening to her soft crying under her blankets. I surveyed her room briefly, noting that it hadn't changed much since she'd entered her teen years. Along the left and right walls shelves I'd mounted years ago held Disney Animator dolls of nearly every Disney princess. A perpetual pile of clothes sat in one corner beneath a desk she hardly ever used. Along one wall a long dresser was covered with an assortment of makeup and jewelry.
I stepped inside Cassie's room, the old floor giving a creak under my first step.
"I... d... don't want to... to talk." She Sobbed.
"I'm not here to talk babe." I said, stepping in beside her bed. "Just to make sure you're okay."
No response. Cassie was spread out under the covers, with one leg poking out toward me.
"Can I sit?" I asked tentatively. After a brief pause, Cassie's leg disappeared back under the covers.
"Thanks." I said, easing myself onto the bed near a lump in the covers that I took to be her head. I stretched out my legs, propped myself up against the bed's headboard, and waited.
I reached out my hand and began softly rubbing Cassie's back, as I'd done pretty much every night for the past ten years. It was a tactic I'd used successfully many times, just waiting for her to begin talking. I didn't have long to wait.
"She hates me." Cassie said, her voice muffled by the heavy blankets over top of her.
"Of course she doesn't." I replied, tapping her shoulder.
"Come on, put your head on my lap."
Slowly, she pushed the blankets off a bit and lay her head on my leg. I brushed the hair out of her face and passed her a tissue from her nightstand.
