Chapter 4
1561 Words
The hospital room remained unnaturally quiet after Amelia ended the call. Katherine sat motionless against the headboard, her eyes fixed on the calendar displayed on her phone. No matter how many times she refreshed the screen or reopened the application, the date never changed. Four years. She had returned four years before everything fell apart, yet her mind stubbornly refused to believe what her eyes were seeing. There had to be another explanation. Dreams felt real. Hallucinations felt real. Perhaps this was simply her dying mind refusing to let go.
She reached for her laptop the moment the nurse returned with her belongings. The machine took longer to boot than she remembered, the outdated software reminding her once again that this truly belonged to another time. Katherine ignored the growing knot in her chest and immediately opened a browser. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for only a second before she typed the name that had haunted her final moments.
Soron Stan. Hundreds of business articles appeared on the screen. Most praised the rapid expansion of Stan Holdings under the leadership of the Stan family, while others discussed upcoming investment projects and charity partnerships. Katherine clicked through article after article, searching for photographs, interviews, or anything that mentioned an engagement.
There was nothing.
No wedding announcement. No articles about her No photographs of Soron standing beside her with a diamond ring on her finger.
She closed the final page and leaned back slowly. Of course there wasn't. They hadn't even met yet.
A strange sense of relief settled over her before another name forced its way into her thoughts.
Joanna.
Katherine swallowed hard and typed the name into the search bar.
Joanna Johnson.
Desperate for certainty, Katherine opened another tab and searched for her own family instead.
Richard Hart.
The familiar face of her father immediately filled the screen beneath headlines praising Hart Group's continued success. Financial magazines called him one of the country's most influential businessmen. News outlets praised the Hart Foundation's latest charitable projects. Interview after interview described Richard and Amelia Hart as one of the nation's most respected couples.
Then Katherine noticed the line repeated in nearly every article.
Richard and Amelia Hart's only daughter, Katherine Hart...
Only daughter. Her eyes lingered on those two words until they became impossible to read. Only daughter. If Joanna truly was the Hart family's biological child, then nobody had discovered the truth yet.
Or perhaps...
Nobody except Soron. The thought sent another chill through her body.
She closed the browser and stared silently at the reflection in the darkened screen. Every memory from her previous life surfaced one after another, each of them taking on an entirely different meaning. Soron's distant expression during the final weeks of their engagement. The reporters accusing her of stealing another woman's identity. Amelia's broken voice asking where her real daughter was. At the time, Katherine had believed her world had collapsed overnight.
Now she realized it had probably begun falling apart long before she ever noticed.
Unable to bear the silence any longer, she opened one of her social media accounts. The interface looked almost unfamiliar after four years. Friends she had long forgotten appeared online as though nothing tragic had ever happened. Birthdays, photographs, university gossip, and meaningless conversations filled the screen, reminders of a life untouched by betrayal.
Almost absentmindedly, she typed Joanna Johnson into the search bar once more.
This time she didn't expect to find anything. Profile after profile appeared before her, each one more ordinary than the last. She opened one, glanced at the photograph, and closed it again. Another. Then another. Nearly twenty minutes passed before her thumb stopped over a profile with only a handful of followers and an old photograph of a girl painfully familar looking. She had no recognised the face completley when the
Curiosity more than hope prompted her to open it.
The account was quiet. There were no glamorous holidays, no luxury restaurants, no carefully curated life like so many others. Most of the photographs showed ordinary moments, a cup of instant noodles, a rainy street, a stray cat sleeping beneath a bench, sunsets viewed from a tiny apartment window.
Katherine continued scrolling without thinking until an older photograph appeared. Her fingers froze.
The picture had clearly been taken years ago inside an orphanage playground. Two little girls sat side by side on a rusted swing they were around 9 or 10, both wearing oversized hand-me-down clothes with scraped knees and messy hair. One smiled brightly at the camera while the other held up a crooked paper flower with childish pride.
Katherine's heart stopped. She recognized the girl on the left immediately. It was herself. Slowly, almost fearfully, her eyes shifted toward the little girl sitting beside her. The smile. The eyes.
The tiny scar above her eyebrow.
A forgotten name escaped Katherine's lips before she even realized she remembered it.
"...Jojo." The room fell completely silent.
Her trembling fingers hurried through the older photographs one after another. There they were sharing a single birthday cake with dozens of other orphaned children. There they were sitting beneath a tree making paper flowers because they couldn't afford toys. There they were wrapped beneath the same blanket during winter, laughing at something only children could understand. The pictures were captioned. "Good old days. Will always miss you Kiki."
Then came the photograph Katherine wished she had never found It had been taken on the day she was adopted.
A younger Katherine stood beside Richard and Amelia, holding a stuffed rabbit someone had bought for her that morning. Several children waved from the orphanage gates behind them.
Near the front stood Jojo. She wasn't waving. She was crying.
The memory struck Katherine with such force that tears immediately blurred her vision.
She remembered promising that she would come back. She remembered telling Jojo they would always be sisters.
She remembered watching the orphanage disappear through the back window of the car while Jojo grew smaller and smaller until she vanished completely. She had never returned.
A broken laugh escaped Katherine as she covered her mouth to stop herself from sobbing.
"So it was you...You are the Joanna." All Katherine remembered was the name Jojo that she had given her.
For thirteen years, Joanna had remained behind while Katherine unknowingly lived the life that should have belonged to her. She had been loved by parents who had spent those same thirteen years searching for their real daughter without ever realizing she was still waiting where they had left her. Katherine had inherited a family, a home, an education, and a future that had never been meant for her. Even Soron... perhaps he had never truly been hers either.
Tears slipped silently down Katherine's cheeks as she looked once more at the photograph of the two little girls smiling beneath the orphanage swing.
"I'm sorry..." she whispered, her fingers trembling as they brushed across Jojo's face on the screen. "I'm so sorry for taking them away from you."
A bitter ache settled in her chest as the pieces of her previous life finally fell into place. She had spent years wondering why everything she loved had been taken from her all at once. Now, looking back, it felt less like fate had been cruel and more like fate had finally corrected a mistake. Joanna had lost her parents, her home, and the life she should have lived, yet somehow, every one of those blessings had found Katherine instead. In the end, the life Katherine had borrowed had caught up with her, demanding to be returned.
She closed her eyes, unable to stop the tears.
"This time," she whispered, gently brushing her thumb across Jojo's face, "I won't make the same mistake."
Her voice trembled, but the resolve in her heart only grew stronger.
"I'll return everything."
The words settled over the quiet hospital room like a vow.
She would not wait for history to repeat itself. She would not allow the Hart family to lose another thirteen years with their daughter, nor would she continue living a life that had never belonged to her. Before the engagement, before the reporters, before betrayal tore everyone apart once more, Katherine would find Jojo herself.
This time, she would be the one to take her home.
"I am sorry for taking them away from you." Katherine's hand trembled. She could see even though she had lived her life the love that was Joanna's ended up findign her one way or the other and KATHERINE suffered the ocnsequences of what she had done. Astolen life had cught up to her after thriteen yeas. " A bitter taste tickeled in her throat.
"This time," she whispered, gently brushing her thumb across Jojo's face on the screen, "I won't make the same mistake."
Her voice trembled, but her resolve did not.
"I'll return everything."
The words settled over the quiet hospital room like a vow.
She would not wait for history to repeat itself. She would not allow the Hart family to lose another twenty years with their daughter, nor would she cling to a life that had never truly belonged to her. Before the engagement, before the reporters, before betrayal and blood stained the future once more, Katherine would find Jojo herself.
And this time...
She would be the one to take her home.
- Writer
