gallery where he went to pick up some new art to brighten up the office. Her name was Juliette, they had

been on a couple of dates, and now he wanted us to meet her. I remember jumping up from the table and

yelling at him. I didn’t understand how he could do this. I was still dying inside every time I thought of my

mother and he’d already replaced her with someone else?! My dad stayed unusually calm during my rant

and didn’t even punish me for screaming at him afterwards. He was resolute though.

“Juliette is coming over next Saturday and you’d better behave,” he told me. He then turned to my sister

who was still sitting at the table playing silently with her food.

“You’ll like Juliette,” he told her. “Juliette has a little boy too, maybe you can play together some

time.” My sister nodded, eager to please, and flashed my dad a shy smile. She was only eight, what did

she know?

Just like I’d been told, Juliette showed up next Saturday. She was almost thirty minutes too late, which

made my dad walk through the house anxiously. When she rang the bell, he almost ran to the hallway. I

saw him kiss her as he took off her coat. When dad introduced Juliette, I was shocked to see how young

she was. She looked ten years younger than my mom. She was thirty-one and sparkled with health. My

mom had looked frail and sallow the last couple of months before her death. The chemotherapy had

affected her liver so her skin had turned yellowish just before she died. In comparison, Juliette radiated.

She was tall and slim and had a friendly pretty face, framed by very long blond hair that hung loosely on

her back. She wore a figure hugging white dress with a pattern of little flowers on it. My mom would

never have worn a dress like that.

When my dad called me to come near and introduce myself, I obeyed like a zombie. The fear of

displeasing my dad was so great that I was compelled to walk forward, even though I didn’t want to.

When I was close enough to shake her hand, I could smell her perfume, which was Thierry Mugler’s

Angel. I knew that scent because that’s what my mom used to wear; the little bottle was still half full in

our bathroom. In an instant I was aware of my dad’s betrayal. My dad used to buy this perfume for my

mom on her birthday and now he must have picked it out for Juliette. I withdrew my hand brusquely and

just told Juliette my name before I ran way. My dad called after me, “Michael don’t be rude, come back

here!” I heard Juliette say it was all right.

“What a pretty little lady you are,” she told my sister and Christine who was hungry for a bit of female

attention, introduced herself happily.

“Traitor,” I thought.

Later that evening we had dinner and my dad forced me to be at the table. It was still warm outside so we

ate with the windows open. I was distracted by the sounds in our garden and tried not to listen to what

Juliette and my dad were talking about.

“I told you Juliette has a little boy too,” my dad said to my sister and me, but only Christine was

listening.

“His name is David,” Juliette said, “And he would love to meet you.”

We met David soon enough as it turned out that my dad already had wedding plans after dating Juliette for

only three months. He couldn’t cope with being a single dad for long, so he allowed himself to fall in love

with Juliette quickly.

The first time Juliette took David to our home, I was feeling excited the whole day. It was not the

pleasant kind of excitement you feel before your birthday, more like the nauseated feeling on the day of an

exam or a dentist appointment. I had just turned thirteen and was feeling very mature already. I had no

interest in meeting this new little boy.

David came in with his hand in his mothers’. He was twelve, but looked younger. He didn’t look

anything like his mom, the blond blue-eyed American girl. In stead his hair was dark and curly and badly

in need of a haircut. He had big dark grey eyes that looked anxious. It seemed he wasn’t so keen on

meeting my sister and me as his mother had told us. When Juliette introduced us, I shook his hand hard and

crunched his fingers in mine on purpose. He flinched but didn’t say anything…

Over dinner my dad talked with Juliette and then announced that they were getting engaged. They

toasted with champagne while we drank bubbly lemonade from grown-up glasses. Christine was

promised a bridesmaids dress and she looked satisfied immediately. She asked if she could wear a little

crown too and when Juliette told her she could, she laughed. David was silent but he looked happy too.

He had already seen my dad a couple of times at his mom’s place and seemed to like him. I knew I was

the only one who was feeling bad about this…

My dad and Juliette got married at city hall two months later with a small ceremony and afterwards they

hosted a modest party at our place. When David and his mom moved in, David got the room next to mine.

They didn’t bring a lot of stuff and most of what they brought didn’t really fit with the rest of the furniture

so it was stored in the garage and later thrown away. Their stuff looked pretty scrappy and I reckoned

they must have been a lot poorer then we were.

David’s dad had been dead for three years and he was never talked about because he killed himself.

When I asked my dad about him once, he told me never to mention David’s dad to either David or Juliette

because it would upset them. He confided in me that David’s dad had been an ‘artist’ who couldn’t

provide for his family and who had committed suicide. Apparently he had hung himself in their living

room.

I wondered might feel about having such a failure as a dad. Maybe that’s why David tried to be so

friendly to mine.

I guess that maybe Juliette had been afraid that my dad would treat David differently from Christine and

me. My dad really loved her and he wanted to do the right thing where David was concerned. So he told

Juliette that he would adopt David if she wanted him too. Juliette was really excited about the idea and so

my dad went forward with the adoption. After a couple of months all the paper work was finished and my

dad legally became David’s dad too. We now shared our last name. David started calling my dad ‘dad’

too. The first time I heard him say it I felt like I’d been stung by a bee, but when my dad didn’t correct

him, I remained silent.

David went to the same school as I did and I heard him tell his new friends that he had a brother and a

sister. Although he was only a couple of months younger than me, he was a year below me at school

because his stupid artist dad had home-tutored him until he was almost six.

When Juliette got pregnant a couple of months later, my dad told me that we were a real family now and

that I had to start calling David ‘my brother’ too. And when our two baby brothers, Jack and Justin, were

born I was the oldest of five kids and nobody at school ever questioned if we were a real family or not.

In all honesty, Juliette tried to be a great mom for Christine and me too. She seemed to care for us from

the moment she moved in and was always kind and loving. She never showed signs of favoring David or

the twins over Christine and me and even put framed pictures of my mom on the chimney-piece next to our

new family portrait. Christine started calling Juliette mom too, but I didn’t and still don’t. There was no

picture of David’s dad on the chimney-piece. I didn’t even know if there was a picture of David’s dad in

the house and if David minded that nobody ever talked about his dad.