Submitted by [deleted] t3_zqeesl in relationship_advice
I (66F) am married to the love of my life, S (66M). He was married before me, and has one daughter (36F) from his first wife. My stepdaughter has always hated me.
Back in 1997, my stepdaughter, B, was talking about her mother constantly, and spraying her perfume, and pulling down the jewelry box that had her mother's gold wedding jewelry in it. She would pull it out and lay them all out, and I would just hear the bells tinkling or the bangles clacking as she'd pull them out and put them back. It was driving me mad. My husband had given me permission to "clean up" the house and get rid of anything that I didn't want in the house. After about two months of her doing this daily, while she was sleeping, I took the case out of her room. When B found it missing, she complained to my husband, and he confronted me. I told him about her constantly playing with it, and that I took it, because I was afraid she would accidentally damage it, as some of the anklets and the waist chain were very delicate and gold is soft. He let it go.
At first, I hid it in my closet, high up behind some extra blankets. It stayed there for a year or two, but eventually I got rid of it and replaced it with fakes. My stepdaughter and I had a fight recently, and now my husband wants to see his ex wife's jewelry. I don't think he'll know enough about jewelry to know it's not the 22k the old pieces were, but I never bought them intending to deceive him. I bought them for B. I'm not sure what to do. I think my fight with B triggered this, because he has zero reason to want to see them when he hasn't asked since I took them. B is no where near marrying. She's disabled and I don't think she ever will, so it's not to pass it on for B's wedding. I feel like this is a trap. Do I tell him what I did? Do I show him the fakes? They've been in my closet long enough that they're quite dusty.
TL;DR: I threw out my husband's ex's jewelry more than a decade ago, and now he wants to see it. I don't know what to do.