Chapter 10 - My Real Mother
DNA answered what Helen wouldn’t.
Helen was not my biological mother.
James was my father.
My biological mother was Helen’s younger sister.
Laura Whitmore.
A name I barely knew.
Family stories said Aunt Laura died in a car accident before I was born.
Another lie.
Laura had an affair with James during a separation from Helen.
Once.
He admitted it with devastating shame.
“I thought our marriage was over.”
Laura became pregnant.
Helen and James reconciled before anyone knew.
Then Laura gave birth secretly.
To me.
Six weeks later, Laura died from complications following an untreated infection.
Helen’s parents made a decision.
Scandal mattered more than truth.
Helen had recently lost her own baby.
So they gave Laura’s child to Helen and James.
Me.
Dad claimed he wasn’t told until months later.
“Why stay?”
“Because you were my daughter.”
“And Helen?”
He couldn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
Helen raised the living baby her sister left behind while grieving the daughter she lost.
Maybe at first she tried to love me.
But Rebecca came a year later.
Her biological daughter.
Her rightful first surviving child.
And somewhere inside Helen’s damaged mind, I became the intruder who had stolen a place.
“You gave birth before your sister.”
Not simply jealousy.
A thirty-year delusion.
I had violated the order again.
First by existing.
Then marrying.
Then having Lily.
I requested to speak with Helen.
Pierce warned me.
I went anyway.
Helen sat behind glass.
No makeup.
No authority.
“Laura was my mother.”
Helen’s eyes closed.
“Yes.”
“Did you ever love me?”
Her face tightened.
“I raised you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Silence.
Then:
“I tried.”
Those two words hurt more than hatred.
“Why Lily?”
Helen looked at me.
“Rebecca deserved something first.”
“So you threw my daughter toward a fire?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
“No. You’d been thinking for months.”
Her expression shifted.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly. You spent my entire life punishing me for surviving your daughter.”
Helen suddenly slammed her palm against the glass.
“You replaced her!”
There it was.
Raw.
Ugly.
Real.
“You came home in her blankets. Slept in the crib James built for her. Everyone told me to be grateful because God had given me another baby.”
My stomach turned.
Nobody had helped Helen grieve.
They handed her another child and called it healing.
But tragedy explained her.
It did not absolve her.
“You should have hated them.”
She stared.
“Your parents. Dad. Whoever forced you.”
“I hated everyone.”
“No.”
I stood.
“You hated the smallest person in the room because I couldn’t fight back.”
Helen’s face collapsed.
I left.
Outside, Pierce was waiting.
She had news.
The fire-pit fuel container contained fingerprints.
Helen’s.
Expected.
Claire’s.
Also expected.
And one more set.
Rebecca’s.
My sister had insisted she knew nothing about the fire.
Now forensic evidence said she had handled the accelerant.
Pierce went to arrest her.
May you like
But Rebecca was already at my house.
Holding Lily.
