My stepson Billy is a wonderful child. He is also a horrible child. Like all children, he jumps from wonderful to horrible with no predictable pattern or warning. He is moody. He has a sense of fairness that extends to everyone around him. He roots for the underdog. He is hyperkinetic and as clumsy as a newborn pup. He has big brown eyes that beg you for love and tell the whole world the state of his heart. He's more like me than the children I gave birth to. My evil stepmother membership card was revoked when I fell in love with him. It was impossible not to.

Nine years ago Billy's mother came to terms with the fact that she was gay. She left not only her husband, but Billy as well. Not because she'd found herself, but because she knew she was also a drug addict. She couldn't raise her son as well as his father could. For a long time Billy never knew when he would see her, although things are more regular now. She's been through a lot and Billy witnessed most of it from the sidelines. He's 12 now and still fiercely loyal to her, I think, because he has seen her pain and like most sons he wants to protect his mother. He loves her just because she is "Mom" and that's enough for him. Sometimes I think maybe he is trying to make up for all the awful things that have happened in her life. I can't prove that, but Billy is the kind of kid who will give his 5-year-old brother the candy bar he's been saving for a week. I think he'd give his mom a whole lot more if he could.

I am the woman who knows his favorite foods, tends his wounded knees and feelings and valiantly keeps my mouth shut over his choice of wardrobe. I'm the one who helps with that ridiculously detailed school project, gives him "the talk" over that C-minus on his report card and wakes up the minute he has a nightmare. I am all the things a mother is to any child, save one; I am not first in his heart. That place is reserved for his mother.

Billy isn't as sure of my love as my other children. He hasn't lived with his "real" mother since he was a toddler, but he knows he loves her best. With that childish logic of his, he sometimes reasons that therefore I must love my "real" children best. It's not true, but it affects our relationship all the same. Sometimes we dance around each other like two porcupines, scared of our own razor-sharp emotions.

Next page | The mother of all foul moods