THEY SWITCHED ME AT BIRTH ON PURPOSE

My brother switched my ID band with the fake daughter's, with his own hands, before we ever left the hospital. I had only just been born, for the second time. "Sorry about this.

Sienna is the only sister I'll claim." He said that in our last life Sienna had been so afraid I'd mind that she ran away from home, and somebody took her.

She was gone for three years. So in this life, he was going to protect her from the day she was born. Our mother stood right there and allowed it. She even covered for him.

What they forgot was that in our last life, after Sienna disappeared, they blamed me for ever coming home, and drove me out into the snow.

By the time I froze solid, they were in that big house holding a funeral for Sienna, putting up a headstone with no body under it.

Now I lay right where I was and watched them carry away someone else's baby, and I didn't cry. They got the daughter they wanted.

After that we were square, blood and all, and nobody had to look back. Chapter 1 When the nurse carried me out of the hospital, the Drapers' car was still parked out front.

The man who had come for me had nothing in his hands. He wore a wrinkled black shirt, and his eyes were shot through with red. The nurse had to try twice, uncertain. "Mr.

Hoyt?" Only then did he seem to come back to himself, and he walked over fast. When he reached out to take me, it was obvious he had no idea how to hold a baby.

His arms were stiff as two pieces of wood, and he didn't know where to put his hand to hold up the back of my head.

I could smell cigarette smoke on his cuff, faint, and under it the disinfectant that never left the hospital.

He looked down at me for a long time, then frowned. "How come she's more wrinkled than yesterday?" The nurse couldn't help laughing. "They're all like that when they're new.

Give her a few days and she'll smooth right out." He grunted, then started in again. "Did she eat today? What about the jaundice?

Is she going to cry all night?" The nurse sounded a little helpless. "Show me a baby that doesn't cry." The man stopped for a few seconds, and his voice dropped. "Her mom's gone." "It's just me now.

I'm scared I won't know what she's crying about." That was how I learned that the man who came for me in this life was named Wyatt Hoyt.

His wife, Elise, had a sudden complication during the delivery. The baby wasn't two hours old when they lost Elise.

The day before, he had been downstairs handling the paperwork for his wife's death. Today he had to come get his daughter alone.

And right then, his own daughter by blood was lying in my birth mother's arms.

Wyatt carried me out, and as we passed the parking area, I heard my brother's voice. "Mom, is Sienna hungry? Where's the formula? I'll make it." I opened my eyes.

Not far off, my mother sat in the back seat with a bundle of pink blankets in her arms. My brother leaned in at the car door, carefully keeping the sun off Sienna.

He was so anxious about it there was sweat on his forehead. Nothing like the boy who had yanked the band off my wrist a little while before.

My mother bent over her, soothing her. "Shh, don't cry, Mommy's here." In my last life, when the Drapers first got me back, she had held me like that too.

She bought me new clothes and brushed my hair herself. When she found out I had never had a birthday growing up, her eyes went red and she said she would make up every one of them.

Then Sienna disappeared, and every word of that changed. "If we hadn't brought you back, why would Sienna have run?" "Why did you have to come back?

You were doing fine out there, weren't you?" On that last snowy day, she threw my coat out the door and told me to get out.

I pounded on the door of that big house for two solid hours. She never opened it once. As if she felt something, my mother suddenly looked up.

Through the car window, her eyes found me. Chapter 2 I didn't cry, and I didn't reach for her the way an ordinary baby would. I only looked at her, quietly.

Something moved across her face, and the next second she pulled Sienna tighter against her. The window rose slowly and cut off my view of them completely.

Wyatt never noticed any of it. He was digging through his own pockets, and finally pulled out a white knit hat no bigger than a hand.

There was a little strawberry sewn onto the brim, slightly crooked. He tried twice to get it on me and pulled it down over my eyes both times.

The nurse finally came over to help. "Your mom knitted that." Wyatt looked at the hat, and his mouth twitched. "She was terrible with her hands." "She insisted on learning while she was pregnant with you.

Ripped it out God knows how many times, and this is the thing she ended up with." The hat was a little big and I couldn't see his face.

I only heard him say, "It's ugly, but it'll do for now." For the first time I moved my fingers on purpose and caught hold of his shirt.

Wyatt went stiff all over, then looked down at me. "What is it?" I couldn't answer, of course. But something seemed to click for him, and he patted my back. "Looking for Dad?

Dad's right here." It was such a small thing to say, and my throat went tight. A baby's body doesn't take orders, not even about feelings.

My mouth crumpled and the crying was already out. Wyatt panicked. "What is it? Hungry? Wet?

Is the hat scratching you?" He stood there outside the hospital doors, walking me back and forth, and the more he tried the harder I cried.

The nurse finally came back out after us. "Don't bounce her like that! She just ate, she'll spit up!" Wyatt didn't dare move after that.

Lying against him, I watched over his shoulder as the Drapers' car pulled out of the hospital. My crying slowed and stopped. This time I didn't go after them.

The Hoyt place was a long way from the hospital, an old building with no elevator.

Wyatt held me in one arm and the things the hospital had given us in the other, and by the fifth floor his face was soaked. When the door opened, I went still.

The living room was full of baby things. Unopened packs of diapers, sterilized bottles, a whole row of tiny clothes washed and hung to dry.

Against the wall stood a brandnew crib, with a few sticky notes on the headboard. [Family photo when she's three months.] [Take the baby to the zoo after six months.] [No storebought cake for her first birthday.

Make it.] The last one wasn't finished. It was only half a sentence. [If she ever asks me why I love her this much…] The ink stopped there, and the rest of the note was empty.

Wyatt stood in front of the crib a long time without moving.

Then he reached up, took the note down, and turned his back to me. "Your mom and her scribbling." He said it, and laughed at it himself. "Handwriting's still terrible." A drop of water hit the back of his hand.

He wiped it away fast, stuck the note back where it had been, and looked down at me. "It's fine. You can ask Dad instead.

Dad'll answer for her." It took Wyatt three whole months after that to even halfway learn how to be a father.

That first month, every time I cried he went through the baby book Elise had left behind. Hungry, sleepy, gassy, or a wet diaper.

When he had tried all of it and none of it worked, he would stand in the middle of the living room holding me, out of ideas. "Jolene, what is it you don't like?" I only cried louder, and in the end it was the neighbor from downstairs who came up to have a look.

Chapter 3 "The baby's hot." It was the hottest part of August and he had been afraid I would catch a chill, so he had wrapped me in three layers.

After that day there was a new line on the first page of the baby book, big and crooked. [Babies get hot.] Elise had gotten a lot of things ready for her baby.

A little dress for three months, a sippy cup for six. A tiny crown for the oneyear pictures. She had even bought the backpack for the first day of preschool.

There was supposed to be one more person in that house. She never saw me. And I wasn't really her daughter.

But the things she left behind came along with me, one at a time, all the way through growing up.

When I was five, I asked Wyatt for the first time. "What was Mom like?" He was frying eggs in the kitchen, and he forgot to even turn off the burner. "Worse temper than me, worse cook than me, always dropping stitches." When he got that far, he slid the egg he had already burned onto his own plate. "But she loved you a lot." I looked at him and said it seriously. "She never even saw me." The fork in Wyatt's hand stopped. "She didn't know what you looked like, but she waited for you." "Every day she had her hand on her belly, guessing whether it was a hand or a foot kicking her.

Woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me the baby moved again." He looked down and took a bite. "That counts as seeing you, I'd say." I didn't ask anything else.

What I really wanted to ask back then was this. If one day you found out I wasn't the baby who was inside her. Would you still want me? But I didn't dare.

In my last life a family had already thrown me out once. In this one, I was afraid of hearing it a second time. The year I was seven, I saw Sienna for the first time.

The school was holding a family photo day, and Wyatt had a camera repair job come in at the last minute and showed up half an hour late.

I was sitting by myself in the back row of the auditorium waiting for him, and that was when Sienna came in. She had on a pretty white dress.

My brother was carrying her backpack, and my mother walked beside them holding a container of cut fruit. Seven years, and they had hardly changed at all.

My brother bent down to straighten her bow. "Don't go running off later." Sienna smiled sweetly. "I know." My mother laughed along with her. "If the pictures don't come out nice, we'll book a photographer again." The family looked perfectly happy together.

When she finished saying it, she looked up and saw me. Our eyes met, and the smile on her face stopped for a beat. I didn't move either. Seven years.

I had thought that seeing her again would hurt at least a little. When I actually did, all I felt was that she was a stranger. She was younger than in my last life.

The fine lines that crying would later put at the corners of her eyes weren't there yet. And she hadn't yet stood in a snowy night with a cold face and told me to get out.

My brother followed her eyes over and his face changed too. Almost on instinct he stepped to the side and put himself in front of Sienna again. Exactly like the day we were born.

It almost made me laugh. Seven years, and he was still afraid I would take something.

Sienna poked her head out from behind him and asked, curious, "Do you know her?" My brother looked away fast. "No. Let's go." They went past me without stopping.

The auditorium doors had shut behind them before I saw Wyatt come running in out of breath. "Sorry. Customer's camera got water in it.

I opened it up and it turned out to be a big job." Then, like a magician, he produced a strawberry lollipop out of his pocket. Chapter 4 "Been waiting a long time, huh?

Bought this to make it up to our princess." I took it, and it struck me that this, the way things were, was pretty good. The days rocked along, and then I was eighteen.

A little over two months from graduation.

Sienna's appendix flared up, and in the bloodwork before surgery a doctor found that her blood type couldn't have come from the two Draper parents.

My birth father took it at first for a recording error at the hospital, but the more he thought about it at home the less it sat right.

He dug out my mother's old prenatal records, and then, without telling anyone, he had a DNA test done. The day after the results came back, he went to that hospital himself.

Working from the birth records for the same time window eighteen years earlier, he found the Hoyts. That afternoon I had just gotten out of school.

I pushed open the door of the shop and there was a strange man sitting inside. Wyatt stood by the window with a look on his face that scared me.

I looked at the man for a few seconds before I finally placed him. In my last life, when they claimed me, he had already been in his fifties. So the first glance hadn't been enough.

He, though, stood up the moment he saw me, and his eyes went red by degrees. "You're… Jolene?" I didn't answer. Wyatt spoke first. "…She's got studying to do tonight.

Whatever you have to say, you say it to me." My birth father went blank for a second, then said it one word at a time. "I'm her biological father." Wyatt's hand tightened slowly around the camera.

My birth father probably hadn't expected him to ask that. "Yes… of course a child should be brought home." When that came out, I went stiff all over. Not because I was happy.

Because I was afraid. I looked up at Wyatt fast, and he was looking at me. Right then I thought how ridiculous I was. Eighteen years, and I was still afraid.

Afraid the next thing out of his mouth would be, go on back then, your real parents are here. I panicked so badly I didn't even put my backpack down. I turned and ran out.

I didn't hear Wyatt calling after me. He didn't catch up until the end of the alley, where he grabbed my arm. "What are you running for?" I kept my head down.

My voice came out muffled and thick. "Making room for you." "Room for what?" "A daughter's spot." Wyatt looked like he had just heard something insane and was too angry to get a word out.

Finally he reached over and knocked me on the forehead. "A spot? What is it, a stool? You slide over and make room?" My throat went tight.

Wyatt sighed, crouched down, and looked at me the way he used to when I was small. "Jolene, I found out today that Sienna is my daughter by blood.

I do owe her." I gripped my backpack strap, and the next thing I heard him say was, "But what I owe her and whether I want you are two different things." I looked up, blank, and saw that Wyatt's eyes had gone red too. "You spiked a fever at seven months.

I carried you into the ER." "You knocked out half a tooth at three.

I paid the preschool back for a cup." "You got your first period, thought you were dying, and called me crying." "And I went to the drugstore and asked three clerks before I figured out what to buy." He got himself so worked up saying it that he laughed. "Eighteen years.

Now you're telling me the blood is different, so none of it counts?" My tears came down all at once, and Wyatt reached over, resigned, and wiped them off. "I can have one more daughter.

I'm not having one less." My mother came anyway, the next day. She didn't go to see Wyatt. She just waited for me outside school.

The car door opened and the first thing she did was hold out a cashier's check. Chapter 5 "That's two hundred thousand dollars.

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm not trying to buy you off." "It's only that we really have failed you, all these years." I didn't take it. "So?" She was quiet for a moment. "Sienna has her AP exams coming up and she has to settle on a college.

Blowing this open now would hurt her too much." "Don't go public about who you are yet.

Once she's tested and her school is settled, I'll find a way to make it up to you." I took a deep breath and asked, "…What do you want me to do?" "Wait a few more months.

Don't worry, we're not going to refuse to claim you. It's just not the best time right now." Exactly like my last life. After they found me then, she had been the same.

Sienna just lost her birth parents, don't set her off. Sienna isn't strong, give a little. Sienna has been with us all these years, you have to give her time.

In the end, my life always came after hers.

I put the check back down on her lap and turned to go. "No thanks." She panicked, and her voice came out in a different pitch. "Jolene!!" I cut her off and corrected her. "You don't get to use that name.

My dad gave me that name." The color went out of her face.

Before she left, she grabbed my hand. "Jolene, Sienna is innocent in this." I pulled my hand back, and I couldn't keep it in. "But every time you talk to me, you start by pleading her case." "It's annoying." Sienna found out soon after.

The first time she came to the shop, she wasn't the arrogant girl I had pictured. She was strangely quiet.

She stood at the counter looking at the photos on the wall, from every age. All of them were me and Wyatt.

She looked for a long time, and her eyes came to rest on the threemonth portrait in the middle. "Where's that hat?" I blinked. "What?" "The white one in the picture." Wyatt came out of the darkroom right then.

When Sienna saw him, her eyes went red. "Did my mother knit it?" The room went quiet.

Wyatt looked at her, and it took him a while to nod. "She did." She cried, cried until her face and her nose were red. Right then it did hurt, a little. Because she wasn't wrong.

Elise was her mother. That hat should have been on her head. The little dresses, the crown, the baby book, all of it should have been hers.

In that swap, I wasn't the only one something had been stolen from. Sienna wiped her eyes and got out, between hiccups, "Can I see it?" I went to my room for the tin box.

The hat was very old by then, the white gone a little yellow. There was still a mark at the edge from when I had spit up as a baby, one that never washed out.

She held it a long time, then suddenly asked, "Can I take it with me?" I hesitated. Before I could answer, Wyatt had already spoken. "If you like it, you can look at it here.

But you can't take it." Sienna's voice started to shake, her face all disbelief, and she turned to me. "But my mother left it for me!" "You've already taken eighteen years.

Isn't that enough?!" Those