Men raised by stepfathers penned long, aching tributes to the men who’d chosen them.

Mia sat on the edge of our unmade hotel bed, clutching her robe, tears tracking silently down her face as she scrolled. “I didn’t want people to pity her,” she whispered.

“They don’t, Mia,” I said, sitting beside her and pressing a kiss to her temple. “They see her. They see how brave she is.”

But the internet reflects the ugly alongside the beautiful. A few comments were venomous—faceless trolls accusing Mia of manipulating her child for clout, mocking me as a naive savior, dragging out the very words my father had used: baggage, mistake, ruined life.

Mia tried to lock the screen, but I saw the tremor in her fingers. I gently pried the device from her grasp.

“My dad said those exact things,” I told her, holding her gaze. “That doesn’t make them gospel. It just makes them cruel.”