Claimed by Eight Families and Done Playing Nice

The grandfather clock on the mantel in the Eastwick estate struck seven, and I watched the fifth limousine glide up the circular drive. My fifth set of maybe-parents in under three months, and the only sensation grounding me was the sharp marble step biting into the backs of my legs. "Keep your shoulders back, Ms. Vale," murmured Mrs. Cutler, the caseworker from the private placement agency. She clutched her leather clipboard with the pinched, brittle expression of someone who had processed far too many weeping teenagers and exhausted her last shred of empathy years ago. "The Ashfords are exceptionally generous. They funded your first-class flight, the designer wardrobe, the private quarters. A touch of sincere gratitude will go a remarkably long way." "I'm grateful," I said. My voice came out flat. I was good at flat. I had perfected it over eight years in the system, the last three months bouncing through "biological family reunifications" that ended the moment someone checked the DNA a second time. The Ashfords were not my family. The DNA test had said so, the same way it had said so for the Westcotts, the Delacroixs, the Harringtons, and the four families before them. But the Ashfords had a foundation to protect and a public story to manage, and apparently a girl who looked close enough to their missing daughter was worth the gamble of a quiet settlement. The front door swung open. A woman in ivory silk descended the steps like she was walking onto a stage. Eleanor Ashford. Forty-six, blonde, and with the kind of face that cost more than my entire former foster placement budget. "Marguerite," she said, and pulled me into a hug before I could correct her. She smelled like roses and money. Her cheek was cold against mine. "You look so much like the photos. I knew it the moment I saw your file." My name was Thea Vale. Had been for eighteen years. But Marguerite Ashford had disappeared from a boat dock in Bellhaven Bay when she was six, and the Ashfords had spent two decades and a small fortune looking for her. They had found her twice. Both times were wrong. I was the third. "Mrs. Ashford," I said, and she pulled back to look at me with those wide, eager eyes. "My name is Thea." "Oh, sweetheart, we'll get all of that sorted." She hooked her arm through mine and guided me up the steps. "All of it. The lawyers, the name change, the inheritance structure. You won't have to worry about a single thing ever again." Behind her, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed, was a boy about my age. Dark hair, gray eyes, and a mouth set in a line that said he had already done this twice and hadn't been impressed either time. "Welcome to the circus," he said. "I'm Grant." He didn't say brother. He didn't say anything else. He just turned and walked inside. The east wing of the Eastwick estate was bigger than the group home I'd spent the last four years in. My room had a canopy bed, a walk-in closet already full of clothes in my size, and a window that looked out over the ocean. Bellhaven Bay was a postcard town, all cliffs and sailboats and old money that had been old for two hundred years. I sat on the edge of the bed and took out my phone. One bar of service. I typed a message to the only person who had ever bothered to answer me. Thea: New family. Third time. They already bought me a whole wardrobe. The reply came two minutes later. Nina: Are they nice? Thea: They're rich. Nice is still pending. Nina: You okay? I looked at the question for a long time. I wasn't okay. I hadn't been okay since I was six, the same age Marguerite Ashford had been when she disappeared. The difference was that people had been looking for her. Thea: I'll survive. I always do. That was the problem with survival. It kept going. The dinner that night was the first test. The dining room had a table long enough for twenty, but only five places were set. Eleanor and her husband, Charles, sat at either end. Grant sat across from me, silent and watchful. And next to him, in a dress the color of champagne, sat a girl with honey-colored hair and a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Marguerite," the girl said, and stood to embrace me. "I'm Cecilia. Your sister." I had been briefed on Cecilia. The Ashfords had taken her in after the second false Marguerite turned out to be a scam artist's daughter from a family in Nevada. Cecilia had been a distant cousin, then a ward, then an "honorary daughter." She had been the one to suggest hiring a private investigator to check the DNA a second time. The family story was that Cecilia had been the one to find me. The family story was a lie. "Hi," I said, and sat down. Cecilia sat next to me, close, her perfume a cloud of vanilla and something sharp underneath. "You must be overwhelmed," she said. "I know I was, when I first came here. It's a lot, isn't it? The house, the expectations. The name." "I don't have the name yet," I said. "The lawyers are still working on it." Cecilia's smile tightened by a fraction of an inch. "Of course. But you'll be Marguerite. It's just a matter of paperwork. And then everything that belongs to her will belong to you." Across the table, Grant's fork scraped against his plate. Neither of us looked at him. "Everything that belongs to Marguerite is already here," Eleanor said, and her voice was warm but firm. "The estate, the trust, the foundation. It's not about belongings. It's about family." "Of course," Cecilia said. "I just meant the legal side. The board seat. The position at the foundation." The foundation. The Ashford Foundation had been Marguerite's inheritance, established in her name when she was three. When she disappeared, Charles had taken control as executor, and Eleanor had stepped into the board chair position. But the charter stated clearly that when Marguerite turned eighteen, she would assume the chair. I turned eighteen in six weeks. I hadn't known about the foundation when I agreed to come. I had known about the room and the clothes and the settlement offer, the same one the other families had dangled and then pulled back. I hadn't known that the timing was the reason they had reopened the search. "You're quiet," Cecilia said. "Are you nervous?" "I'm tired," I said, which was true. "Travel can be so exhausting," she said, and reached for my hand. Her fingers closed over my wrist, cool and dry. "But you're home now. You don't have to worry about anything ever again." She squeezed. Hard enough that I felt the bones shift under her grip. Then she let go, and lifted her water glass, and said to Eleanor, "She's wonderful. I knew she would be." The thing about being raised in the system is that you learn to read people fast. You learn to spot the ones who want something from you before they say a word. You learn to keep your face still while your pulse runs. Cecilia wanted something. She had been the provisional Marguerite for two years. She had been the one at the board meetings, the one on the foundation's press releases, the one who had been photographed at charity galas with Eleanor's hand on her shoulder. She had been groomed for the seat. And then I had arrived. The bracelet lay on the table between us like a challenge. Gold, with a thin band and a charm shaped like a bell. Marguerite's bracelet, Eleanor said. Found in her room after she disappeared. Cecilia had worn it for two years. "I thought you might like to wear it," Cecilia said, on the third night. We were in the library, and the house was quiet. "It's yours. By rights." She held it out. The charm caught the light. I didn't want it. I wanted to go to bed and not dream about drowning. But Cecilia's eyes were bright and waiting, and I knew that refusing would be worse than accepting. It would confirm something she had already decided about me. "Okay," I said, and took it. The band was warm from her wrist. I turned it over in my fingers. It was too small for me, but I snapped it on anyway, and it sat tight against my pulse. "Perfect," Cecilia said. "It looks just like the photos." Her phone buzzed on the table. She glanced at it, and something flickered across her face. Then she picked it up and typed a quick reply. "Who is it?" I asked, and didn't know why I asked. "Nobody," she said. "Just the foundation's PR team. Sylvia. She wants to know when you're going to make your first public appearance." "Whenever the lawyers say so, I guess." Cecilia looked at me for a long moment. Then she smiled, and it was a real smile, which was somehow worse. "You're not what I expected," she said. "What did you expect?" "Someone who wanted it more." She stood and left, and I sat alone in the library with a bracelet too tight on my wrist and the distinct feeling that I had just agreed to something I didn't understand. The announcement was set for Sunday. A reception at the house, three hundred guests, and a photographer from the Bellhaven Tribune. The lawyers had confirmed the DNA two days earlier, and the paperwork was filed. I was Marguerite Ashford, legally, by the end of the following week. I didn't feel any different. I felt like Thea Vale wearing someone else's name. The morning of the reception, I woke up at five and couldn't go back to sleep. The house was silent, the ocean gray through the window. I put on the bracelet from Cecilia and went downstairs. Grant was in the kitchen. He was making coffee, and he didn't look surprised to see me. "You're up early," he said. "So are you." He poured two cups and slid one across the counter. "Don't drink the one from the machine in the dining room. It's been broken for three months and nobody's fixed it because Eleanor doesn't drink coffee." I took the cup. It was strong and bitter, and I liked it. "Thanks." We drank in silence. Outside, the light was starting to come up over the water, and the sky was turning the color of the inside of a shell. "You don't have to do this," Grant said, after a while. "Do what?" "Any of it. The reception. The name. The foundation." He stared into his cup. "You could walk away. They'd settle, and you'd never have to see any of us again." I thought about it. I thought about the group home, and the four years of caseworkers, and the other seven families who had looked at me and seen a replacement for a girl they had lost. I thought about Nina, who was the only person who had ever asked if I was okay and then waited for the answer. "I don't have anywhere else to go," I said. "You could go back." "I was in the system for twelve years. Going back isn't an option." Grant looked at me then, really looked at me, and for a second he wasn't the cold, angry boy who had greeted me at the door. He was just tired. "Be careful of Cecilia," he said. "She's your sister." "She's not my sister," he said. "And neither are you. Not yet." He finished his coffee and set the cup in the sink. "But she's been here for two years, and she thinks the foundation belongs to her. She's not going to hand it over without a fight." The reception started at two. I stood in the drawing room in a dress Eleanor had chosen, a dark blue that made my eyes look gray, and shook hands with people whose names I forgot immediately. Every one of them said the same thing. "You look just like her." "What a miracle." "Eleanor must be so happy." Eleanor was happy. She kept her hand on my back and her smile fixed and told the story of how they had found me twice over to anyone who would listen. Cecilia stood at the edge of the room in a pale pink dress, and she smiled, and she said all the right things, and she never once left my side for more than five minutes. At four o'clock, I went to find a bathroom. The one in the hall was occupied, so I went up the back stairs, past the room where Marguerite had slept as a child, and into the small powder room at the end of the corridor. When I came out, Cecilia was waiting for me. She was standing next to the window at the top of the stairs, and she had the bracelet in her hand. "You took it off," she said. "The clasp was bothering me." I had taken it off in the bathroom and set it on the sink. I hadn't remembered picking it back up. "I found it on the floor," Cecilia said. "You dropped it." She held it out. I reached for it, and she pulled her hand back. "You know what this bracelet means," she said. "It means you're her. The real one. Everything that was supposed to be mine is going to be yours." "I didn't ask for it," I said. "You didn't have to." Her voice was quiet, but there was something underneath it, something hard. "The lawyers called this morning. The board seat transfers on your birthday. Two years of work, gone. You walk in and take it, and everyone acts like that's the way it should be." I could have said something sympathetic. I could have said, "I'm sorry." But I was tired, and I was tired of being sorry, and so I said nothing. Cecilia's smile came back, brighter than before. "It's fine," she said. "Really. I want you to have it." She held out the bracelet again, and this time I took it. And that was when she moved. I didn't see it happen. One second she was standing in front of me, and the next she was stumbling back against the stair rail, and the bracelet was on the floor, and her eyes were wide and full of tears. "Marguerite, why would you do that?" she cried. I hadn't touched her. I hadn't moved. But the door at the bottom of the stairs opened, and Eleanor and Grant and half the reception came into view, and Cecilia was crying, and I was standing there with my hand still out. "She tried to take my bracelet," Cecilia said, and her voice cracked. "I told her it was hers now, and she was so angry. She pushed me." That was a lie. I hadn't pushed her. I hadn't been anywhere near her. The bracelet lay on the floor between us. And everyone was looking at me.