The pool house glass was cold against her back, and her brother was opening presents ten feet away on the patio where string lights made everything look magical and innocent and completely unlike what was happening behind the reflective barrier.
“Your brother’s opening your gift,” I whispered.
My hand was on the glass beside hers, our profiles silhouetted against the party lights, visible to anyone who looked but invisible to everyone who didn’t know how to see. I’d positioned us perfectly—backlit by the pool house interior, facing the dark glass that reflected the backyard like a mirror. From outside, we were shadows. Shapes. A stepmother and stepdaughter having a private moment.
From inside, we were something else entirely.
She shook her head. Silent. Her bikini top was askew from where I’d already pulled at it five minutes ago, when she’d come to “get a towel” and I’d followed because I was her stepmother and I was supposed to make sure she didn’t drown. Her cheeks were flushed. Her palms were flat against the glass like she was holding up the entire lie, keeping it from crashing down on all of us.
I stepped closer. My red cover-up—the one Richard had called “too revealing for a family party”—brushed against her bare stomach. My mouth found her ear, my breath hot against the chill of the glass.
“Or should I open you instead?” I whispered.
My hand slid down her back. Under the elastic of her bikini bottom. She gasped—a sharp, involuntary sound that carried through the glass, that vibrated against my palm, that made her brother look up from the present he was unwrapping, confused, searching for the source of the noise.
I didn’t stop. I pressed her harder against the glass, my fingers finding her already wet, already trembling, already completely lost. My body shielded hers from view, my cover-up draping around us like a curtain, my other hand tangling in her hair to hold her still.
Her brother looked right at us.
Right at the glass where his stepmother was finger-deep in his sister and he saw nothing but reflections. Nothing but the string lights bouncing off the surface, nothing but his own confused face looking back at him, nothing but the shape of two women standing close in a way that mothers and daughters sometimes do.
“Smile,” I commanded against her ear. “Wave at him.”
She did. Trembling. Her hand lifting from the glass in a small, broken wave that was supposed to look casual, supposed to look sisterly, supposed to look like anything other than what it was. Her brother smiled back—a bright, genuine, completely oblivious smile. Returned to his presents. Ripped the paper from whatever Emma had bought him with her father’s credit card.
My other hand joined the first. Both inside her now, stretching her, filling her, pressing her against the glass with a rhythm that made her forehead bang against the surface in tiny, desperate movements that could have been laughter from outside.
“Say his name,” I whispered. “Say ‘Jake’ while I make you come. Let him hear you say it.”
“Jake,” she gasped, her voice breaking, her body shaking. “Jake. Jake. Jake.”
She came with her face pressed against the glass, her mouth open in a silent scream, her eyes locked on her brother’s back as he held up a sweater and showed it to the crowd. She came with my name breaking from her lips and his name breaking from mine and the glass fogging from her breath in a pattern that looked like evidence.
After, I fixed her bikini. Smoothed her hair. Kissed her cheek with a tenderness that was almost maternal.
“Go give him a hug,” I said. “Tell him you love him.”
She walked out. Stood in the string lights. Hugged her brother while I watched from the glass, my fingers still wet, my heart still hammering, my cover-up hiding everything and nothing.
He walked toward the pool house. Toward me. Toward the glass door where his sister had just been naked and coming apart.
“Thanks for the party, Elena,” he said, his voice muffled through the glass. “And thanks for keeping Em company. She gets shy at parties.”
I smiled. The perfect stepmother. The perfect host. The perfect lie.
“Anytime, Jake,” I said. “I love keeping her company.”
Emma looked back at me from the party. From her brother’s arms. From the life she was supposed to be living. And she mouthed two words that no one else could see:
“Again. Now.”
I went to her room that night. After Richard fell asleep. After the guests left. After the house was quiet except for Jake’s snoring down the hall.
She was waiting. Door unlocked. Naked. Her brother’s birthday card still on her desk, her handwriting saying “love you” in the same hand that had gripped the glass while I destroyed her.
“Make me say his name again,” she whispered. “Make me say it while you—”
I did. All night. Until her voice was hoarse and my fingers were raw and the sun came up on a new day where we were still stepmother and stepdaughter and nothing had changed except everything.
We still go to family parties. Still stand by the glass. Still wave at her brother while I open her in ways that no gift ever could.
Some families give presents. I give Emma the only thing she wants: me, inside her, while the world watches and sees nothing.
