My Family Chose the Fake Daughter Again

The day my birth parents came to get me, they spent it comforting the girl who had been living my life for twentyeight years. She had already married the Bellamy heir in my place.

Two kids, a boy and a girl. I had been laid off a month before, and the man my family set me up with heard I never finished high school and left before the check came.

When the truth came out, she cried so hard she couldn't talk. Her husband promised her in front of everyone that she was the only woman he loved.

My birth mother held her and said, "You're my one and only baby." The living room was full of people that day.

Not one of them came over to ask me how those twentyeight years had gone. I stood there by myself. That night my mother told me she would find me a good husband.

To make it up to me. I looked up at the chandelier. "Mom," I said. "I want to go home. Please let me go home." Chapter 1 Nobody set out to find me.

It took a rainstorm and a woman who couldn't stop staring at my face. Mrs. Thorne had driven up to Hollis to light a candle at the church she grew up in.

A promise she made years back and never got around to keeping. It poured on the way out. She waited it out under the covered porch by the parking lot, and I was there too.

I had come to light one of my own. She stopped and looked at me for a long moment. I did the same. There was only one reason for that. We looked too much alike.

She hired somebody to look into it. They found something. Hollis was her hometown.

Twentyeight years ago she and her husband fought over something small and she drove up there to cool off. She was far along by then.

Something went wrong, it turned into an emergency, and she delivered at the little county hospital. Another woman gave birth there the same night.

The place was small and shortstaffed and took whoever came through the door. There were no private rooms for anybody, no matter who you were. The nurses never stopped moving.

Two ID bands got switched. Two babies went home with the wrong mothers. Mrs. Thorne and I did a DNA test. It came back the way she thought it would. She was my mother.

Twentyeight years had gone by. The nurse had died of an illness a few years back. There was no one left for Mrs. Thorne to be angry at.

So she held my hand instead, eyes wet. "Nell. Come home with me.

Let me make it up to you." I stood in the lot outside my rundown walkup on the north side, looking at the black Bentley behind her that had no business being on that street, and none of it would fit in my head.

A month before, I had been laid off and was worried about where the next job was coming from. A relative had pushed me into a setup.

The man heard I never finished high school and left before the check came. And now, all at once, I was somebody's real daughter.

For what it's worth, the people who raised me were good to me. They never knew the truth, so they raised me like I was theirs. They died in a car accident when I was fourteen.

I went back to the Thorne house with her. I did test after test with the rest of them. Every one said the same thing. I was their daughter. My parents sighed a lot.

My brother looked at me like I had come back from a war. And Celia Thorne, the girl who had my life, took my hand and got it out through her tears. "I'm so sorry.

I took twentyeight years from you." My mind drifted somewhere else. Her skin was clear. She held herself the way you hold yourself when nothing has ever gone badly.

There was a softness in her eyes that only survives if nobody has ever come after you. My face sat in them. Worn down. Used up by a life that never once went easy.

Shame came over me so fast I couldn't look at her. I pulled my hand back. That was the first thing I ever refused from them. She blinked. The tears came harder.

The whole room moved toward her at once. My mother stood up. She started to speak. The first words out of her mouth were not for me.

Chapter 2 My mother had her arms around her. "Celia. This isn't your fault. You're the innocent one here." My father said, "She's right. It was the nurse. Celia, you're too good.

You always turn it on yourself, and it isn't healthy." My brother said something along the same lines. She kept crying anyway. It tore my mother up.

She rocked her and said, "No matter what happens, you're my one and only baby." Celia finally laughed through it. I stood where I was and wanted to be anywhere else.

I shouldn't have come. From where they were sitting, I was the one who had wrecked this family just by existing. Her husband showed up later. Corbin Bellamy.

Corbin was the youngest CEO in Boston. Rich, goodlooking, and single long enough that people put him at the top of every eligiblebachelor list they made online.

After the wedding he turned into the man who adored his wife.

He kept his face flat and moved Celia behind his arm. "The two families made an arrangement years ago," he said. "That spot was supposed to go to the Thorne daughter.

But the woman I married is Celia. I respect her, I take care of her, and the Bellamys stand behind her. Take this well and I'll make it worth your while.

Take it badly and it gets hard for you." He took Celia home. My mother held my hand. "Celia and Corbin grew up together. You can't force these things.

Try to let it go." "I'm not holding onto anything," I said. "People date who they want and marry who they want." Nobody carries a grudge over some arrangement two sets of parents talked about before either of them could walk.

Not now. Life had already worn me down. I had nothing left over for keeping score. That made her happy. She had gotten the answer she wanted, so the subject was closed.

She set out to make it up to me. She introduced me to every friend she had. She walked me through every store on Newbury Street.

One bag she picked up without checking the price cost more than half a year of my old job.

She decided my skin looked bad, flew me overseas to have work done, and hired a nutritionist to fix my meals. A woman's face matters, she said.

You take care of it from the inside out. Everything in that house was good. So good I couldn't find anything to complain about. My mother was a competent mother.

And like most mothers, she decided it was time I settled down, and started looking. She found a match she liked.

That night she told me about it with her whole face lit up, and I looked at the chandelier over our heads and missed the dim bulb in my old rental. "Mom," I said. "I don't want to get married.

Let me go home." She said no. Her voice got hard. "Home? What home? This is your home." Then she asked me, "Nell.

Your father and your brother and I are all trying to make this right. Is there something we're doing wrong? Are we not good enough to you?" My throat closed and nothing came out.

They were good to me. Of course they were.

It was only that when I asked the housekeeper to heat up a bowl of soup for me, she smiled and said of course, and then I heard them talking in the kitchen. "She really thinks she's a lady now.

Wants me to cook for her. A high school dropout playing heiress. What a joke.

She isn't fit to tie Miss Celia's shoes." It was only that when my mother ordered me a limitededition bag and the sales associate asked whether she wanted the crocodile one sent over as well, my mother answered like I wasn't standing there. "No.

I waited six months for that one. That one's for Celia." It was only that a housekeeper asked her, "Mrs. Thorne, the bone broth for Miss Nell today.

Do you want me to use the imported reserve batch?" I was standing at the turn of the stairs. Neither of them saw me. Chapter 3 She said, "That one's for Celia.

She's pregnant, she needs the good stuff. Give Nell the other one. It comes from a friend's supplier. Lower grade, but it's perfectly fine to drink." Were they bad to me?

Everything a daughter of a house like that is supposed to have, they could hand me. It was only that Celia would always get the better one.

And if I said it out loud, I'd be the petty one. I didn't answer for a long time. My mother's patience ran out. "Enough. Don't say things like that again, it's cold and it hurts us.

The man I've set you up with is Corbin's brother. He's young and he's already built a company that's doing well.

Marry him and you'll have a good life." I met Corbin Bellamy's brother. Emmett.

He was every bit as capable as his brother, which made him one of those men people look at and can't find a flaw in.

Before all this, he was somebody I would only ever see from a distance.

And here he was, sitting across from a woman who used to look at him from that distance, because his family had arranged it. He didn't want me. That much was obvious.

Flat face, closedoff posture, and he opened with it. "There's someone I care about.

Marrying you is just me clearing a problem out of her way." I thought about it and took a guess. "The person you care about is Celia." His eyes narrowed a fraction.

That was answer enough. He said, "I came to tell you I'll marry you. After the wedding I won't run around on you. In public you'll have the standing of a Bellamy wife.

Don't get any ideas about anything past that.

And I've already made this worth your while, so if you're still holding something against Celia, don't blame me for what comes next." He said all of it without one warm word in it.

A man everybody wanted was willing to marry me. To keep me from disturbing his sisterinlaw's beautiful life. Every single person in this story was thinking about Celia.

For her happiness, a man would give up his own marriage. Which is funny, when you sit with it. Arranging his own marriage was his business. He had arranged mine too.

Except I had someone. A year ago he went into a lake after a few kids who were going under. He got them out. He didn't have anything left to get himself out. He's gone.

Something turned over in my chest, and I laughed at Emmett, short and mean. "Mr. Bellamy. That's a very noble speech.

In your head you've already lowered yourself as far as a man can go. But tell me why.

You hand something to me, so I have to take it?" "You hand it to me and I want it?" He stopped. "I've never once thought about getting back at anybody," I said. "You're willing to give up your marriage for Celia.

I'm not, and I won't. But if you really want to buy off whatever ugliness you think is in me, then do this instead. Your company had a guy in ops named Jonah Mercer.

Find out if he left anything behind. Anything at all. If he did, bring it to me." I meant every word. Emmett didn't buy a word of it.

He looked at me the way you look at a woman running an angle, and after that there was even less in his face than there had been. I didn't care.

I went back to the Thorne house and heard laughing from the front room. Inside, Celia had brought her twins over to her parents' house.

Two beautiful kids were climbing all over my mother's knees, and my mother couldn't stop smiling. Celia looked a little uncomfortable.

But she smiled at me anyway and told the twins to call me Auntie. They chirped it out, then turned around, threw themselves back at my mother, and called her Grandma.

In that house, I was the only one whose name came with a layer between us. Chapter 4 Celia brought up the gowns my mother had given her. "I tried all of them on.

Mom, you have such a good eye, every one of them fits me perfectly. I wore one to a party last week and everybody was shocked.

That gown is almost impossible to get." My mother beamed at her. "Of course. The harder something is to get, the more it should go to our girl. Your aunt bought those gowns.

She said to give them to Nell as a welcome gift, but Nell doesn't carry herself well enough for them yet, and they'd only be wasted on her.

So I thought they'd suit you best." Celia's smile came apart slowly. Nobody in the room said anything. My mother finally understood and turned to look at me, caught.

Celia apologized to me over and over, then gathered up the twins and left. My brother came home confused. "I just ran into Celia and her eyes were red.

Did somebody go after her?" He turned that question on me with his eyes. My mother laid the whole thing out for him. His shoulders came down. He smoothed it over. "Mom's not wrong.

Celia does suit them better. Giving the dresses to Nell wouldn't show what our aunt meant by them anyway." He laughed like none of it mattered. "It's fine.

I'll send you some of this season's pieces tonight." He did what he said. The clothes came that night. Unfortunately, so did somebody from the Bellamys.

The man carried the gowns up to my room untouched, all of them. "The young Mrs. Bellamy says she's already taken twentyeight years of Miss Nell's life.

She doesn't want to owe her anything more." Before I could turn them down he was gone. I looked up and found my brother's face in the doorway. That night he knocked on my door.

He didn't yell. He didn't throw anything. He laid the gowns out flat on my bed, one at a time, picked up a pair of scissors, and cut from the collar straight down to the hem.

He finished one, shook it open so I could see it properly, and reached for the next. He watched my face the entire time.

When the last one was done, he spoke. "You have to fight me for every single thing? A few dresses too? Are you really that selfish?" I didn't look away from him.

A thirtyyearold man making his point to his sister with a pair of scissors.

He probably thought he was being restrained. "I didn't ask for them," I said. "And I didn't take them." "Don't give me that." His voice came down hard. "Celia is sensitive, she notices everything.

If you hadn't shown her how badly you wanted them, why would she do this? I knew it. A girl who's never seen anything." He slammed the door on his way out.

Downstairs, the staff cleaned up the mess without a word. I stood there by myself. Twentyeight years of living, and I had been through much worse than this.

After my parents' accident I went into foster care and moved through three homes. At sixteen I dropped out so I could feed myself. I cried plenty of nights back then.

I didn't have tears left for this kind of thing. But at the end of the hallway my parents' door stayed shut, and looking at it, something went through me anyway.

We hadn't been quiet. They heard all of it. Not one of them came out. I looked at the moon through the window. It seemed cold that night.

The next day my mother felt guilty enough to take me shopping again. On our way out, something happened.

A car came down the street out of control and headed straight for a kid in the crosswalk. I didn't think.

I ran, got my arms around him, and took us both over the curb into the median. The kid screamed and cried. He wasn't hurt.

My back, on the other hand, was going to be one solid bruise. His parents thanked me and I waved them off, and when I looked up I saw Emmett Bellamy in a car at the curb.

His eyes were dark. Something moved through them that looked like surprise. He got out and came straight at me. The two brothers did look alike.

I thought about what Corbin said to me. Take it badly and it gets hard for you. He stopped in front of me.

Chapter 5 I couldn't read his voice. "That was brave." I didn't have the energy for him. I turned to go and he caught my wrist. He held on and looked at me for a long moment.

The sun was behind him and I couldn't make out his face, only his eyes, and they were burning. "You're hurt." There was a long scrape down my arm.

I pulled free. "Not your problem." He came to the house that evening anyway, and brought a doctor who handled that kind of thing. My mother was in a good mood that night.

She paid a little more attention to me. She told me my aunt had been running the London office, that things over there were steady now, and that she was flying home next week.

The family was throwing her a welcomehome party.

My aunt was a serious woman who ran things, better at it than my father, except that back then my grandparents still believed the company went to the son.

So my aunt's share came out small. She and my father got along, though, and for years the two of them held the company up together. "It's exhausting, running things like that.

Celia wanted to work at the company once, went and got an MBA, lasted a year, and it took so much out of her she gave it up and put everything into her own little family instead.

And your brother, well, he's stuck with it. If he had a choice he'd rather do nothing all day like Celia." I drifted off partway through.

What was so bad about being a woman who ran things? Every time I saw one of them on TV, something in me wanted that. But wanting it isn't the same as being able to do it.

I knew that better than anybody. I never finished high school. The thought hit and shame came right behind it. Everyone in Boston who mattered showed up for my aunt's party.

She saw me and her eyes filled. She had already heard the whole story. She took my hand. "You've had a hard time of it." One sentence, and my eyes stung so hard I had to hold still.

Then she said, "You're strong." At the party Celia and Corbin moved through the room arm in arm with people folding in around them, the pair of them out of a magazine.

My parents were busy doting on the grandkids. Nobody looked for me. I've always fit best in the quiet corner where nobody has to deal with me. But my aunt saw me.

She talked with me for a long time. Halfway through, my mother finally remembered I was there and brought the twins over so I could get close to them. We were family, after all.

I didn't feel much toward them. I made the right noises for a minute, then went out by the pool for some air. After that I went to the restroom.

When I came back, everything had gone wrong. The little girl had fallen in. Somebody got to her fast enough. She was in Celia's arms now, screaming.

My mother kept asking, "What happened? Wasn't somebody watching them? How did Pippa end up in the pool?" The questions must have come at the boy too hard. He started shaking.

He saw me and burst into tears. "Auntie Nell pushed her! Auntie Nell pushed Pippa!" Before I could get a word out, my mother's hand came across my face