44. The Best Step Dad
My stepdad had a secret daughter and was almost charged with attempted murder because of it.
When he was in his late 20s, he started dating a woman in his apartment complex. After a few months, she cut off all contact. Turns out, she got pregnant, but was super married and never told him.
Her husband must have been a special kind of unaware, because she hid the pregnancy from him, covering it up by claiming she had stomach cancer.
When she delivered, she left the baby in a dumpster. It was found and rescued by a janitor at the hospital.
The woman came forward a few days later. My stepdad knew nothing about the pregnancy at all and hadn’t heard from her for the better part of a year.
As soon as he saw the baby, it was undeniable it was his, and he did everything he could to claim custody while having to go through a rigorous process to prove his innocence.
He also had to go through months of parenting classes, and prove that he deserved to keep the child.
In the meantime, the story made national headlines and offers for adoption were pouring in. But he is absolutely a “family is family” person, and was determined to get custody of his child from the state (the mother was now very much in jail).
After a long process, he finally had custody of his daughter. However, he was in his late 20s, working a demanding on call job, and his first wife had just abandoned their toddler son at the demands of her new husband.
He was living in a sh*tty apartment, working 65 hours a week, usually overnights, and now alone taking care of two children under the age of 3.
Within a year or so, he finally caved and gave his daughter up for adoption. The family was very wealthy, lived in a great area, and were unable to have a child of their own.
He even tried to negotiate being a part of her life, but the family felt it would be best to raise her as their own. It killed him, but he agreed and agreed not to contact her, under the stipulation that she be told what happened when she was of age.
Within a few weeks of her 18th birthday, she located my stepdad. He and my mom were well-married at this point (my mom knew about this from the beginning).
He and my mom had moved out of state when I was 20, and it took a couple of years before I was ever able to go visit.
So as my mom was in town, and we were planning my first visit down to them, she told me basically “by the way, this is a thing that happened, and when you’re visiting, your stepsister will be down here as well.”
She and her adoptive mother (her adoptive father passed away shortly before her 18th birthday) are now very much part of the family.
His son had a pretty rough life and unfortunately died of a heroin OD on his 25th birthday, just a few months after meeting her.
I went back and read all the articles I could find about it. The quotes in the articles are so purely him.
Also purely he is the fact that he’s spent the last 25 years STILL turning down offers to be on shows like Oprah, Ellen, etc, and numerous paid book deals, and the like. All he ever wanted out of the whole situation was to provide the best life he could for his daughter, even though that meant giving her up.
She now does a lot of work with Safe Haven. She’s kind of a typical mid-20s girl. You can tell she kind of loves the attention she’s gotten from it, and I believe she’s actually accepted a book deal – much to his chagrin – but at the end of the day, the work she’s doing IS a net positive, so he’s happy to support her endeavors.
He’s one of the most loyal, honorable people you could ever meet. It’s never unclear to him what the right thing to do is. Life has thrown him a lot of b*llsh*t for his efforts, and even though I always generally liked him, it’s uneasy to really see a stepdad as part of your parental unit, especially when they come into your life when you’re already nearly an adult, but reading and learning about how he handled that situation earned a lot of respect and adoration from me, as it made me realize that all the kind things he did for me growing up had nothing to do with the uneasiness of being a step parent, or anything to do with making my mom happy – he was doing them because, without hesitation, he knows the right thing to do, does it, and his greatest pleasure in life is to help people and make other people happy.
My real dad is no slouch by any means, and very much part of me, but even though my stepdad has never once felt the need to teach it or explain it to me, I learned the joy of selflessness, and the value of true morals – not the kind you have to do mental gymnastics to justify – from watching him.
God, what a good guy he is. I should call him tomorrow.