The Replaced Heiress Returns as a Boss

"Our daughter is finally home!" I opened my eyes. On the other side of the bed my parents had their arms wrapped around a girl I had never seen before in my life.

Their real daughter was lying three feet away.

Turns out that while I spent three years out there chewing bark and drinking out of the river, trying to claw my way home, they had already picked out a replacement and forgotten I ever existed.

I pulled the IV out of the back of my hand and walked out. I didn't look back. You've got a new daughter. I'll see myself out. Twenty years later. I came back to Charlotte.

Private equity. My name on the door. And the Merricks, who had forgotten me so cleanly, couldn't keep the lights on. They were out begging somebody to buy in. They came to me.

My brother, who once couldn't be bothered to look at me, went down on both knees hard enough to hear them hit the floor. "Erin. We were wrong.

God, we were so wrong." The boy next door blocked my way, eyes red raw. "Why didn't you come back sooner?" I looked down at them. Tilted my head.

Let one corner of my mouth go up. "I'm sorry.

Who are you?" "Have we met?" Chapter 1 My nails were in my brother's arm, deep enough that his blood was running down through my fingers.

Wind coming up off the Catawba hard enough to shove. "Erin, let go!" He screamed it at me. His eyes had gone red the way an animal's do. I didn't let go.

If I let go, he goes in the water. What I forgot was that I was eight. Eightyearolds don't have any strength.

When we started to slide, I heard the screaming from the bank. "My son! My son!" That was my mother. She wasn't looking at me. Not once. Then I went over.

To my mother, only the son counted as family. The daughter didn't. I woke up in a hospital. My head felt like it was coming apart. I got my eyes open.

There were people around the bed. Dad. Mom. And... A girl I had never seen. She had on my clothes. Sitting in my spot. Holding my mother's hand.

My mother was crying so hard she couldn't get a breath. "My daughter. My daughter's home, she's home..." My father's eyes were wet too.

He kept patting the girl's shoulder. "All right. That's enough now.

She's back, that's what matters." The girl tucked herself into my mother's arms, voice small and soft. "I'm not going anywhere, Mom. Not ever again." Nothing in my head.

Nothing at all. Who was she? Why was she in my clothes? Why was she calling my mother Mom? Then it came back to me. Three years ago, I got lost. I was five. It was the mall.

A crowd came through and pushed me out the other side alone, and I never made it home again. Traffickers took me up into the mountains. I got handed around a few places.

An old couple ended up keeping me. They weren't good to me and they weren't bad to me. Food. A place to sleep. Every day I thought about home. About Mom and Dad. About my brother.

They were looking for me. They had to be. They were sick with it. They missed me. They had to miss me. Three years. Then I got my chance and I ran.

I asked and I walked and I asked and I walked. When I got hungry I chewed bark. When I got thirsty I drank out of the river.

Right before I went off the bluff, I saw my brother down at the water, fishing. I lost my mind. I ran at him, yelling his name.

His foot went out from under him and he pitched toward the water. I got to him. I grabbed on. Then we both went over. I saved him. I traded myself for him.

And now there was a stranger in my spot, with my family closed in a ring around her. Nobody looked at me. Nobody noticed I was awake. I opened my mouth to say Mom.

The word got as far as my teeth and stopped. Because I had just worked something out. My mother's hand was holding that girl's hand. My mother's tears were for that girl.

My mother's daughter wasn't me anymore. I shut my eyes again and let them think I was still under. I was in that bed three days. Three days is a lot of listening.

The girl's name was Marissa. Marissa Kessler. My parents brought her home three years ago. Found her in a group home, the story went. Supposed to look a little like me.

Close enough in age. They decided she was the daughter they lost. No. Let me say it right. They chose to believe she was. Because then they could stop looking.

Then they could stop hurting. Then they could stop waiting on somebody who might never come back.

Chapter 2 "Marissa is such a good kid." That was my mother. "Our girl's finally home." That was my father. "I'll protect you. From now on." That was my brother.

I lay there and listened to all of it. I couldn't name what it was. Sour? Bitter? Both, maybe. Neither, maybe.

On the fourth day a nurse came in to change the dressing and caught me with my eyes open. "Oh! Oh, honey, you're awake!" Then my parents burst in.

My mother stood at the rail, looking at me. Something complicated in her face. My father stood behind her and said nothing. My brother didn't come. The brother I traded myself for.

The brother who had just finished saying I'll protect you. From now on. I waited three days. That door opened a lot of times.

Not once was it him. "You..." My mother's voice came out dry. "What's your name, sweetheart? Where do you live? We'll help you get hold of your family." I looked at her.

At the way she was looking at me. The way you look at anybody. And then I smiled. "Rin," I said. "I don't have any family." Something went across her face. Her eyes went red.

I don't know why. Maybe because she used to have a daughter with that same sound in her name. She didn't ask anything else. She just nodded. "You rest up and heal.

We'll cover the hospital bill." Then she left. She didn't look back. I lay there and looked at the ceiling. Stupid. All that way. For what? They already had a new daughter.

Who was going to remember you? The day they discharged me, I went and looked at the house. The big house, deep in Myers Park. Beautiful. Marissa was out back on the swing.

My mother was pushing her. My brother stood off to the side with an ice cream, waiting for the swing to slow down so he could hand it over.

She took it and laughed. "Thanks, Aaron." My mother laughed too and reached over to smooth her hair. Good light on all three of them. It looked like a commercial.

I stood outside the gate and watched through the bars for a while. Then I turned around and walked. I didn't look back. On the way out I said one sentence in my head. It was this.

Erin Merrick, you're dead. Chapter 3 What happened after that was simple. I went back up to Hollis and found the old couple who'd kept me. They asked why I was back.

I said the people down there didn't want me. The old woman let out a breath. She didn't say anything. She put a plate of food in front of me.

The old man smoked and worked on it a long time before he got a sentence out. "Then you study. You get out of here. And you don't come back." I nodded.

After that I studied like it was the only thing holding me to the ground. I was good at it. I was very good at it.

Good enough that a teacher drove all the way out to the house to tell them I had something in me and they needed to get me into a real school in Boone.

They went back and forth on it for a long time. Then they took out their retirement savings and sent me. Boone, then Asheville. Asheville, then Raleigh.

I tested my way up the whole way. Scholarship after scholarship. Senior year my SAT came back a perfect 1600. The local paper sent someone out to interview me.

She asked what drove me. I thought about it. "I wanted to stay alive," I said. She thought it was a joke. She laughed and put it in the article anyway. It wasn't a joke.

I wanted to stay alive. I wanted to live better than that. I wanted to live without ever having to answer to anybody again. Then I went east. Full ride. Ivy League.

The day I left, both of them came to see me off. The old woman had hold of my hand, eyes swimming. "Baby girl. You take care of yourself out there.

Don't let anybody push you around." The old man muttered off to the side, "I'd worry about the other fella." I laughed. And somewhere in the middle of laughing my eyes went hot.

I got my arms around her and held on. It took me three tries to get the sentence out. "Grandma. Grandpa.

When I come back, neither one of you is ever going to worry about money again." The old man waved me off. "Go on. Get." Then I got on the plane.

When we lifted off I watched the clouds and a lot of things came back. The mall where I got lost when I was five. The bluff I went off when I was eight.

The way my mother looked at me in that hospital. The way you look at anybody. The backyard that looked like a commercial. And then: None of it had anything to do with me anymore.

Ten years. Ten full years. I never set foot in Charlotte again. Not because I couldn't. Because I didn't want to.

I flew the two of them out to New York and kept them near me for a few years.

Then the old man's health went and he wouldn't hear of dying anywhere but in the mountains he was born in, so I took them home. Bought them a house in Boone. Hired a caregiver.

Wired money every month, on time. They told anybody who'd stand still long enough what a good girl I was. I never told them to stop.

Somebody in this world had decided I was worth loving. This year the firm decided to open a Charlotte office and sent me down to run it. I said yes. Ten years.

About time I had a look. We landed at three in the afternoon. The light was so good it hurt to look at. Sunglasses on, heels on, out through the terminal.

The Charlotte office sent someone to get me. A girl barely out of college, so nervous she couldn't get the words in order. "Ms. Sutton. Ms.

Sutton, the car's, um, it's right outside." I nodded and followed her. We went past a billboard and I stopped. It was an ad for a development company. The name ran along the bottom.

MERRICK GROUP. The girl followed my eyes and explained. "That's one of the oldest names in Charlotte. I think they're out looking for investment right now.

Word is they can't hold on much longer." I said, "Huh," and kept walking. Looking for investment. One firm in this city can catch something the size of Merrick Group.

It's the one that just sent me down here. Merrick Group. The Merricks. Such a familiar set of words. And I couldn't put a face to a single one of them anymore. Really. Not one.

My third day back, a cocktail reception. I've done a thousand of them: hold a glass, work the room, trade numbers, trade cards, say nothing worth saying for two hours.

I didn't want to go. Our partners on the deal wanted my face in the room. So I went. I was barely through the door when someone came at me. A man in an expensive suit.

Everything underneath it looked used up. "Ms. Sutton. Ms. Sutton, hello, hello. Aaron Merrick, Merrick Group." Hand out. Smile turned all the way up. I looked at him. Three seconds.

Then it came. That's my brother. No. That's the Merrick son. Not my brother. I haven't had a brother in a long time. "Hello." I put my hand out and shook his. He didn't let go.

He was staring at my face and something behind his eyes kept climbing. "Ms. Sutton, have we... have we met somewhere?" I took my hand back. "No." He blanked. He had more to say.

Somebody at his elbow pulled him off. He kept his head turned the whole way out, still looking at me. Like a man going under, staring at the last piece of wood on the water.

He'd come back for me before the night was over. Chapter 4 I took my glass and went to stand in a corner. Something churned for a second, then went flat again.

Nothing to churn about. They're strangers. A while later, somebody else came over. Younger. Goodlooking. White suit. Like he'd walked off a poster. "Ms.

Sutton." He stopped in front of me with a smile somebody had raised him to have. "Can I buy you a drink?" I gave him a look. Didn't know him. "Sorry. I don't drink," I said.

It didn't rattle him. He kept smiling. "Juice, then. Just so we've met." Someone leaned in at my shoulder, voice low. "Ms. Sutton, that's the Pell heir. August Pell.

One of the most eligible bachelors in this city." The Pells. August Pell. Pieces started coming loose. There was a boy next door when I was little. The Pell boy.

He was always the one taking me around with him. One time I opened my knee up and he carried me to the hospital on his back. One time some kids started on me and he stepped in.

And one time, not long before I got lost, he gave me a barrette. I kept that barrette a long time. Somewhere along the way I lost track of it. "Ms.

Sutton?" He saw me go somewhere else and said it gently. I came back and looked at him. Twenty years had changed a lot about him. Grown. Settled.

Nothing left of the kid who carried me on his back. "Hello," I said. "No juice. Thank you, though." Something dropped behind his eyes. He nodded anyway, still smiling. "All right.

Another time, maybe." He turned to go. Then he stopped, and looked back at me. "Ms. Sutton. You really... you don't remember me?" I looked at him. I looked right into his eyes.

Then I shook my head. "I don't know you." He left. Slow. His back had something lonely in it. I stayed in my corner, holding a drink I hadn't touched. I was calm. Really.

Perfectly calm. When the thing let out, someone was waiting for me at the door. Aaron Merrick.

He was standing in front of my car with about six different things happening on his face at once. "Ms. Sutton.

Could I have a minute?" I looked at my watch. "You have five." He pulled in a breath, and the first thing out of his mouth almost made me laugh. "You're my sister." I raised an eyebrow. "Erin.

You're Erin, aren't you?" He came a step closer. His eyes had gone red. "I pulled your file. You did high school in Raleigh and before that there's nothing. It's blank.

You have my mother's face, exactly the way she looked at your age. There is nobody else you could—" "Mr. Merrick," I said. "I think you have the wrong person