Mary Anne, the world's teariest person alive, immediately began to cry.

"Sis," she repeated. "It's really true. We're stepsisters now." "No, just sisters," I corrected her.

Mary Anne's tears flowed harder. "Thanks . . . sis," she replied.

It was my mother's wedding day. Well, it was her second wedding day. Her first one had been sixteen years ago, when she married my father. About fourteen years later they had gotten divorced. We were living in California then - Mom; Dad; my younger brother, Jeff; and I. After the divorce, Mom moved Jeff and me here to Stoneybrook, Connecticut. She didn't choose Stoneybrook randomly. Stoneybrook is the town where she grew up, and her parents, my grandparents, were still living here. It was also the town where she had gone to school with a guy she liked a lot (although that didn't have anything to do with her decision to move back here). The guy's name was Richard Spier, and he is Mary Anne's father. She and Mr. Sp - I mean, Richard (Mary Anne and I had decided to call our stepparents by their first names, Richard and Sharon) had dated when they were in high school. But my grandparents hadn't approved of Richard. Mom's family had a lot of money; Richard's didn't. They said he came from the wrong side of the tracks. What soreheads. And they saw to it that after graduation, their daughter (my mother) got as far away from Richard as she could. They sent her to college in California. That's where she met and married my dad. Meanwhile, back here in Connecticut, Richard met and married Mary Anne's mom. He put himself through law school and got a good job (fake out on my grandparents), even though some terrible things happened. His parents died, Mary Anne's mother's parents died - and Mary Anne's mom died. It was awful. Mary Anne was quite young when she lost her mother and barely remembers her. Still, I think it must have been terrible to be almost alone in the world, just Richard and Mary Anne.