I spent 12 years believing my stepdaughter hated me.<\/p>\n
Every birthday, I sent Chloe a gift. A necklace. A handbag. A cookbook. Every single package came back marked \u201cReturn to Sender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eventually, I stopped trying.<\/p>\n
Three days after deciding not to send another birthday gift, a huge box arrived at my door.<\/p>\n
It was from Chloe.<\/p>\n
Inside were 12 presents, birthday cards, and letters\u2014all addressed to me.<\/p>\n
Every envelope had also been marked \u201cReturn to Sender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then I noticed the handwriting.<\/p>\n
It was my husband’s.<\/p>\n
David had been sending everything back.<\/p>\n
For years, he told me Chloe resented me. Meanwhile, he’d told Chloe that I found her exhausting and wanted her out of our lives.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
He finally admitted the truth.<\/p>\n
He was afraid Chloe and I would become closer to each other than either of us was to him.<\/p>\n
He had stolen more than a decade from us because of jealousy.<\/p>\n
I demanded Chloe’s real phone number and called immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you hated me,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought you hated me too.\u201d<\/p>\n
We both started crying.<\/p>\n
That weekend, Chloe came home carrying the cookbook I’d bought her years earlier.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought maybe we could make something together,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For years, I thought Chloe had built a wall between us.<\/p>\n
It turned out my husband had locked the door from both sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I spent 12 years believing my stepdaughter hated me. Every birthday, I sent Chloe a gift. A necklace. A handbag. A cookbook. Every single package came back marked \u201cReturn to Sender.\u201d Eventually, I stopped trying. Three days after deciding not to send another birthday gift, a huge box arrived at my door. It was from …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9845,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9843\/revisions\/9845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}