She Played Victim, I’ll Unmask Her

I was the real missing heiress to the wealthy Harrison family. The day my biological father tracked me down and brought me home, the fake daughter who'd taken my place all these years dropped to her knees in full view of the whole household, begging me not to kick her out of the house. Sure. She can stay. We both get to be here. As long as I'm breathing, I'm a member of the Harrison family. So that only leaves her to be a family ghost even when she's dead. When my biological father showed up, I was clutching a scrap of bread, scraping frantically at the last crusted-on bit of salty soft cheese spread stuck to the bottom of a jar. The bread was leftover from my foster mom half a month earlier, already moldy and rotten through. The cheese spread had dried into a dark, crusty film across the bottom of the jar. But it was the only thing in the house that was even remotely edible. My biological father pushed open the door, glanced around the run-down, ramshackle rental apartment, and fixed his gaze right on my face. He walked over, pulled the moldy bread out of my hand, and set a soft, fresh cake gently in my palm. "Fatima, I'm your dad. I'm here to take you home." I stared at him in a daze, tears streaming down my face in big, hot drops. I opened my mouth to call him dad, but not a single sound came out. When I was six, I came down with a terrible fever. My foster parents refused to spend money taking me to the hospital. I pulled through on my own. I survived, but the fever left me completely deaf and mute. My dad's eyes burned red, and he crushed me into a tight, shaking hug. I was surrounded by a crowd of people, but I couldn't spot my biological mom anywhere. I tugged on my father's hand, fished a tattered notebook out of my worn-out school bag, and scrawled two words on the page. Where's mom? A dark shadow flickered across my father's face. "Selena has a stomach bug, so mom's staying home to take care of her. Come home with dad, and you'll see her soon, okay?" I bobbed my head so hard my neck ached a little. My dad picked up my notebook casually. "Can daddy take a look at this?" I nodded again. Once we were settled in the luxurious car, my father flipped open my notebook. He only made it through a few pages before he couldn't bring himself to turn to another one. The pages were covered with messages I'd written to my foster parents over the years. I'm sorry mom, I was wrong. Dad please don't hit me. I'll work really hard to make money when I grow up. I'm hungry, pretty mom, can I have a little something to eat? Entry after entry, all the same desperate, pleading lines. I didn't need to hear him to know his heart was getting torn to shreds. When we pulled up to the mansion, my mom was standing at the door waiting for us, propping up a fake-weak Selena. Selena smelled sweet and looked soft and well-cared for. We were both sixteen, but she was a whole head taller than me. She stumbled over sobbing, and dropped to her knees with a loud thud right in front of me. "Fatima, please don't kick me out. If the family doesn't want me, I'll have nowhere to go." The day before, when they heard the family was coming to get me, my foster parents had packed up all their stuff and ran off in the middle of the night. Everyone assumed they'd bailed because they were terrified the Harrisons would come after them for how badly they'd abused me. Only I knew the real reason: they'd bailed to cut off any chance the Harrison family would send Selena back to them. Sure enough, the second Selena dropped to her knees, my birth mother lost it first. She stormed over and shot me a sharp, annoyed glare. "Fatima, what is wrong with you? Selena's sick and begging you, and you just stand there like a statue? You can't even bother to help her up? How can you be so cold-hearted?" I clung tighter to my birth father's hand, my face twisted with panic and confusion. My father turned to my mother, his voice as icy as a midwinter blizzard. "Fatima couldn't hear. She only understands basic lip-reading, and Selena didn't even face her just now. How was she supposed to know what Selena was saying?" My mother stepped back two paces, clutching Selena to her chest protectively, her whole body tensed with wariness. "Did we mix the kids up? There's no history of deafness or mutism in either of our families. Our daughter could never end up like this!" My father flicked a cold glance at Selena, his brows knitting into a deep frown. "A high fever left her that way because she didn't get medical care in time." He had to be taking some of his anger over the abuse my foster parents put me through out on Selena, right? My mother's eyes went wide with shock. "Why didn't she get to a doctor? Did her foster parents refuse to take her?" My father held out the tattered notebook to her. "Read it for yourself."