When I first met my now-wife, she had a 3-year-old daughter. From the beginning, I loved and cared for her like she was my own.

By the time she turned four, she started calling me “Daddy,” completely on her own. Her biological father has always

been inconsistent—sometimes showing up, sometimes disappearing for weeks or months at a time. When she’s with us,

she refers to him by his first name, which says a lot.Last night, while she was visiting him, I got a text from her asking

if I could come pick her up. I could tell something was wrong. When I got there, I found her cradling her arm,

which was visibly swollen and clearly causing her a lot of pain.

She told me , she had fallen off her skateboard. I asked her biological dad why he hadn’t called my wife,

and he brushed it off, saying she was just being “dramatic.”My stepdaughter,

still in pain and obviously upset, asked me to take her home. I looked him straight in the eye and said,

“This is why I’m her real dad, not you.” Then I took her to the emergency room. We were there until

almost 1 a.m., and after X-rays and evaluation, it turned out her arm was actually broken.