The Accidental Daughter
My mother froze. My older brother, Mark, froze. I froze.
Mark, ever the man of action, immediately declared he was taking us all for DNA tests. Mom, her legs threatening to give out, fumbled for her phone to call my dad. “David, you need to come home. I think we have the wrong daughter.”
My father’s reply was unnervingly calm. “I know.”
“What do you mean, you know?”
“You’re the one who told me to change her,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact. “She was crying too much, you said she was giving you a headache. So I went and found one that didn’t cry.”
A beat of stunned silence. Then, my mother’s shriek nearly shattered the windows. “I told you to change her diaper!”
1
I was halfway through a marketing proposal when my mother drifted into my home office, her expression weighed down with the gravity of a Shakespearean tragedy.
“Chloe, I can’t hide this from you any longer.”
I leaned back in my chair. Here we go.
“The truth is,” she continued, her voice trembling, “you’re not our biological child. We’ve loved you as our own all these years, and the thought of sending you away… it’s unbearable.”
She paused, waiting for my reaction. I just watched her, silent.
“And now… my other daughter, the one I never got to meet… she’s here. Chloe, you have no idea, she looks exactly like me.” Mom buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with manufactured sobs. “Now that she’s back, I have no choice but to send you away. I just hope… I hope you won’t hate me.”
I slowly closed my laptop and held out my hand. “Give me your phone.”
She looked up, confused, but handed over her iPhone. I navigated to her Kindle app, went to her library, and long-pressed on her three most recent reads.
The Secret Heiress Returns.
Switched at Birth: The Rancher’s Daughter.
My Cruel Billionaire, My Secret Baby.
I deleted them from the device.
“I thought you were still in the middle of The Alpha’s Reluctant Mate,” I said dryly. “What happened? Did you get tired of the pack politics?”
Mom’s grief vanished, replaced by a flicker of guilt. “The updates were too slow,” she mumbled, her words rushing together. “I lost interest. Well, since you’re busy, I’ll just… go.”
She scurried out of the room. “Close the door on your way out, please.”
As the door clicked shut, I heard her muttering to herself. “So serious. So boring. Just like her father, not an ounce of imagination.”
Who else has a mother who treats her Kindle Unlimited subscription like a sacred text and tries to act out the plot twists?
With a sigh, I reopened my laptop, trying to find my train of thought. But the door burst open again.
This time it was my four-year-old brother, Leo, his eyes wide with panic.
“Chloe, it’s bad! They found out! My… my real sister is here!”
Leo, my mother’s most devoted and impressionable student. He was the only one in the house who would willingly play a part in her melodramas. His utter lack of cynicism made him the perfect accomplice.
I gave him a flat look. “You’re too late. I already called Mom’s bluff. Didn’t she tell you?”
I leaned forward and pinched his soft, chubby cheek, summoning my most wicked smile. “Uh oh, Leo. Looks like you’re not Mom’s favorite little actor anymore. She found a new playmate.”
His lower lip trembled. “No, Chloe, I’m for real! There’s a girl downstairs, and she says you’re not Mom and Dad’s real daughter. She is.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “And Mom saw her and just… collapsed on the floor. You have to come see.”
When I got downstairs, the girl was curled into my mother’s arms, delivering a heart-wrenching monologue.
“Mom, I finally found you,” she wept. “You have no idea what my life has been like.” She gestured vaguely at her arms. “Beatings were normal. I’d get new bruises before the old ones could even fade.” Her voice cracked. “And they hated me because I was a girl. After my brother was born, it felt like even breathing was a crime.”
My mother looked completely bewildered, her maternal instincts short-circuiting. She stared at the girl, then back at me, unable to get into character.
“Congratulations, Mom,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Your dream came true.” I gestured at the girl. “And wow, she really is your spitting image. We can probably skip the DNA test.”
“Chloe, honey, come help me up. My legs feel like jelly,” Mom pleaded, reaching a hand toward me.
But the girl was faster. With a practiced swiftness, she was on her feet, supporting Mom’s arm. “I’ve got you, Mom.”
“Call your father,” Mom instructed, her voice shaky. “Tell him to get home. Now.”
“I will, I will!” the girl chirped eagerly. Then she paused, her face falling into a mask of tragic beauty as she looked at me. “Chloe… would it be okay if I had Dad’s phone number?”
My little brother, Leo, who had been hiding behind my legs, muttered under his breath. “She’s so extra. Mom must love her.”
2
“It’s over for you,” Leo whispered, his little hand clutching the hem of my sweater. “Hey, if you have to leave, can you take me with you? I choose your side.”
My dad, David, was summoned home from the office. My older brother, Mark, canceled a business trip and raced back.
Compared to my mother’s flustered panic, my dad was an island of calm. “Alright, everyone, settle down,” he said, surveying the scene. “I know all about this.”
Every head in the room swiveled toward him. “You know?” we all asked in unison.
My dad gave my mom a cryptic look. “You know, too. In fact, this was your decision. Have you really forgotten?”
Mom’s confusion deepened. “My decision?”
“Yes. You remember,” he said calmly. “You complained our daughter was crying too much, keeping you up all night. You told me to change her. So I did. I picked one that was quiet.”
Mark swallowed hard. “Mom… you really said that?”
My mother’s face went blank as she searched her memory. A moment later, a horrifying realization dawned, and she let out a wail. “I told you to change her diaper!”
Well. The mystery was solved. It was now abundantly clear that I wasn’t their biological child. And as for the girl—who introduced herself as Leah—there was an eighty percent chance she was. That face, a perfect replica of my mom’s college photos, was hard to argue with.
Once this new reality settled in, Leah began her encore performance.
She dropped to her knees on the Persian rug, tears streaming down her face like a tragic heroine in a movie. “Dad, Mom, please, don’t blame Chloe,” she pleaded. “She’s been living my life, enjoying everything that should have been mine for twenty years, but none of it was her fault. Please, don’t throw her out.”
She looked up, her eyes wide and pleading. “I don’t have to be your daughter. I don’t even have to live here. Just let me stay as a housekeeper. I’ll cook and clean for you every day, just so I can be near you. That’s all I want.”
My dad, who has always taken things with a crippling literalness, nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Well, we have a storage room in the basement. It’s small, but it’s easy to clean. You could stay there. As for the housekeeper duties, I’ll text you our family’s schedule and a list of responsibilities.”
Leah’s face went pale. She shot a desperate, help-me look at my mother.
Mom jabbed my dad in the ribs. “David, shut up. I’ll deal with you later.”
I started to head upstairs to pack a bag, but Mom stopped me, her own eyes now filled with genuine tears. “Where are you going? It’s not like our house isn’t big enough. You can’t leave. You don’t even know where your biological parents are.”
“She’s right, Chloe, you can’t go back to them!” Leah exclaimed, grabbing my arm with theatrical desperation. “I can’t let you suffer the way I did. My adoptive parents… they’re monsters. Just pretend you’re not their child. Promise me you’ll never, ever contact them.”
But later, when no one else was around, the mask dropped. Leah cornered me in the hallway, her eyes burning with a hatred that was anything but theatrical. “Why are you still here? Don’t you get it? This isn’t your home anymore.” Her voice was a low hiss. “You’ve been a parasite for twenty years, living a life that wasn’t yours. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’ll leave after the DNA test results come back,” I said, trying to push past her.
I didn’t want to engage, but she was relentless, a constant, buzzing presence at my side. She shadowed me around the house, poking and prodding with passive-aggressive comments, trying to needle me into leaving on my own accord.
It was exhausting. Her little acts were endless.
When a package from Net-a-Porter arrived for me, she would sigh dramatically. “Wow, Chloe, you have such amazing taste. That coat must have cost a fortune. I wouldn’t even know how to spend that much money. I haven’t bought new clothes in years.”
My mother, her heartstrings thoroughly plucked, immediately took Leah on a shopping spree. Leah returned everything the next day without even trying it on.
She presented the refunded money to my mother with teary eyes. “Mom, Dad, you work too hard for your money. I don’t need anything. Just being with you is all the happiness I need.”
3
To demonstrate her frugality, she insisted on saving the leftover chicken carcass from dinner to make soup for us the next morning.
Then came the staircase incident. She cornered me on the landing, her voice a low taunt. The moment she heard my mother’s footsteps, she grabbed my hand, placed it on her own shoulder, and theatrically threw herself down the last few steps.
“Chloe, why did you push me?” she shrieked, clutching her ankle. “I know you hate me for coming back and stealing Mom and Dad’s attention, but I’m innocent in all of this! I just wanted my family. Is that so wrong?”
I was too tired to even argue. I just turned to go back to my room.
“Stop right there!” my mother’s voice was sharp. “You come back here and apologize to Leah this instant.”
I turned. Her face was flushed with anger.
“I feed you, I clothe you, I have raised you for twenty years. Even after finding out you’re not my daughter, I didn’t throw you out. Don’t you have a single shred of gratitude?” she raged. “I did not let you stay here so you could bully Leah! This is unacceptable. You will give her a sincere apology right now, or I don’t care what your father says, I will kick you out of this house myself!”
Leah, propped up on the bottom step, shot me a triumphant smirk over Mom’s shoulder. Her eyes danced with excitement.
I sighed. It was beyond ridiculous.
“Mom,” I said, my voice flat. “Leah is new here, so she might not know. But you live here. Are you forgetting the entire house is wired with security cameras?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Shall we go review the footage?”
Mom slapped her forehead. “Oh, right. I forgot.”
She turned to the now-pale Leah and patted her arm consolingly. “Don’t worry, sweetie, it’s okay. We’ll just try a different scene next time. And maybe a new character? This clumsy victim thing isn’t really working for me, to be honest.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I much preferred that fragile, broken-flower persona you had when you first arrived. That was much more my style.”
Her stage-director tone seemed to horrify Leah more than anything.
“Mom, what are you saying?” Leah stammered. “Are you suggesting I was faking it? That I was trying to frame Chloe?”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant at all,” Mom backpedaled quickly.
“Then why didn’t you stop me? You knew there were cameras, but you let me make a fool of myself! What am I to you people? A clown in your private circus?”
Her righteous, screeching questions left my mother utterly baffled.
“So… should I have meant it? Or not?” Mom asked cautiously, trying to read Leah’s expression for the correct answer.
That was the final straw. Leah completely broke down, sobbing hysterically as she ran to her room.
Mom watched her go, then turned to me with a frown. “This is exhausting. She’s no fun at all. Clumsy, terrible at acting… David should just forge the DNA results and we can send her back.”
My thoughts exactly.
You and Dad really were made for each other.
And speak of the devil, my father walked in. “Family meeting! Everyone in the living room, now!”
Mark clattered down the stairs. “Are the results in?”
Leo sighed with the weariness of a jaded old man. “Great. As if this family wasn’t weird enough already. Now we’re adding another one. I’m going to lose my mind.”
Leah eventually emerged, her eyes puffy and red. She crossed her arms, ready for battle.
“Now that the results are in, what are your terms?” she demanded. “From what I understand, Chloe has quite a few properties and a significant amount of money in her name—all gifts from you. I can tolerate her continuing to live here, for now. But she needs to return what is rightfully mine.”
She looked from my mother to my father. “And her engagement to Ethan Rhodes is obviously off the table. Have you spoken to the Rhodes family yet? Are they canceling the engagement, or will they transfer it to me?”
“Hold on,” my dad said, cutting through her rapid-fire demands. He held up a large manila envelope. “You should probably look at this first.”
She snatched the envelope from him, her hands trembling as she pulled out the report. Her face went from defiant to ashen in an instant. “This… this is impossible.”
Her voice was a choked whisper. “How can I not be your daughter?”
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