My Husband’s Daughter’s Desire to Live with Her Stepmother

I wish my husbands daughter would want to live with her grandmother
When I married Julien, I knew he had a daughter from a previous marriage. His exwife, Élodie, had abandoned the child six years earliershe took her things and fled to Belgium with a new boyfriend, restarting her life from scratch. Since then shes had two more kids, calls her eldest twice a month on video, and only sends presents for holidays. I could see the little girl yearning for her mother, scrolling through her phone, hoping shed say, Come live with me. But the mother never invited her, never showed up. She simply erased her from her life.
At first, the child stayed with my motherinlaw, Juliens mother. But she quickly became exhausted, overwhelmed by the chores, the tantrums, the crises. She gave the granddaughter back to her father. Julien brought her home, looked me straight in the eyes and whispered, Amélie will live with us. For a long time.
I genuinely tried to be a good stepmother. I bought her clothes, cooked her favorite meals, took her to school, had hearttoheart talks. I wanted to become a friend. Yet she shut herself off, as if an invisible wall had risen between us, with no effort to bridge it. She didnt ignore meshe made it clear that, in her world, I was nobody.
Three years have passed. Now the girl is twelve and still lives with us, issuing orders as if this were her own apartment, not ours. Every evening she complains to her father: Aunt Claire forced me to clean, Aunt Claire didnt buy what I wanted. Then my motherinlaw calls me, accusing me of not taking enough care of the child and reminding me that Im about to have a baby too, so I should learn to be a mother. Yet she herself refuses to look after her granddaughter for even an hour when I have an urgent doctors appointment or work commitment.
Im exhausted. I work, manage the house, cook, and now Im pregnant. Julien, while not taking his daughters side, still asks me to be softer, more lenient. I cant take it any longer. The girl has become a constant source of irritationdisorderly, insolent, never saying thank you, never listening, never satisfied. She isnt mine, and I no longer hide that fact.
Sometimes at night, sitting in the kitchen, I think: If only I had refused for her to move in If I had insisted But its too late. I cant leave Julienwere having a child together. And, selfish as it sounds, I increasingly dream that his daughter will want to go back to her grandmother, saying, Im better with Grandma. I wont beg her to stay. I wont even cry.
All I want is peace. No endless accusations, no fighting for my place in this house. I want my child to grow up surrounded by love and harmony, not tension and arguments. Perhaps thats my only chance to save this family without losing myself.