Stepmother - Part 1

Story

My father died... Receiving the news from my mother, I (Jean) returned home for the first time in two years to attend the funeral. Though I say mother, this is my first meeting with the woman my father remarried while I was away at boarding school. My father was the eldest son of a wealthy family, but he indulged in every kind of debauchery, and this was already his fourth marriage. When I opened the door, there stood a woman I was seeing for the first time—my stepmother. To my surprise, she was the very image of my mother in both looks and air, and improper though it was, I was seized by an urge to leap into her chest and 'cry' as I did in childhood. The sight of my father, dead in a fall from a horse in the mud, was pitiful. At that moment, what crossed my mind was: why were both my mother and my stepmother drawn to a man like this? The next day, a lavish carriage stopped in front of the house. The one who stepped down was a man named Fernand, who served as the main household's lawyer. Because of my father's squandering, our home was already mortgaged, and my grandfather had decided to take us in. But at the time I didn't know—there was another reason my grandfather took us, mother and son, in. In the main household, there is no male heir but me. In other words, my grandfather taking me in carried the meaning of upholding the main household's family precept: 'let a male child inherit the entire fortune.' And so my stepmother and I, jostled in grandfather's carriage, headed for the main household.