“Get down from there this second, you headache of a person!” My stepmom yelled at seven-year- old me the first time I stayed at her house.

“I need my dad!” I yelled back walking up the stairs two at a time. “I have a nose bleed.”

“Don’t go getting blood all over my white walls!He’s napping. Get down here before you wake him up.”

I stared at her from the top of the stairs, holding my nose, feeling the blood running through my fingers. Sheila looked like the evil stepmothers I read about in fairy tales. She dressed in long frumpy dresses, wore a loose bun, a string of pearls she fidgeted with often, and had a mole on her cheek with a single strand of hair sticking out of it.

Okay, so maybe I made up the part about the mole, but everything else is real. And now it was ten years later and my dad and her are getting ready to walk down the aisle and I have a big decision to make. You see, I’ve been holding a secret.

That day I ran upstairs looking for my dad, I walked into a room. After getting tissues for my bloody nose and not finding my dad, I found something else and that something else could possibly stop the wedding right now if I wanted to. There was only one problem: my dad was crazy in love with this awful woman.

I know what you’re wondering. If she’s so awful, and I have a way to end it, why haven’t I?

Fancy egg sandwiches. My dad and I were dirt poor when he met Sheila. He fell ill after my mom died and his disability income didn’t stretch very far. A few weeks after meeting Sheila, we moved in with her, had three warm meals a day including fancy egg sandwiches for breakfast.

I tried to tell dad Sheila’s secret many times throughout the last ten years. but every time I worked up the courage, I also worked up an appetite that Sheila’s money could help alleviate.

“You look beautiful, sweetheart,” my dad approaches me and interrupts my thoughts with a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for wearing a dress. I know you hate them.”

“Of course, dad, you look dapper yourself,” I smile back. “Are we sure Sheila deserves you?”

“Deserves me?” Dad chuckles. “Sheila saved my life. Our life.”

“Is there anything I could tell you about her that would make you not want to marry her?”

“That she killed someone,” he laughs and slaps his leg as though it’s the wildest shit he’s ever said.

“Dad, please sit down. There’s something I’ve been needing to tell you.”