Page 93 of What Goes Around

Is that why she tried so hard to take her place?

Was she trying to overwrite an entire life she felt she’d been denied?

The questions came fast, sharp, impossible to quiet. So many cracks in the story.

So many empty spaces where answers should have been.

Chapter 29: Just One Signature

The months slipped by, and a day ago, I turned eighteen.

Marissa came into my room that morning singing softly, carrying a single muffin with a candle stuck into the top.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” she smiled brightly, as though we’d always had this tradition.

We hadn’t.

No previous birthday of mine had ever started with singing. I had never been woken up with candles or balloons. And yet, whenever a relative asked, because Apple liked to brag about being woken up to songs and decorations, Marissa always brushed it off.

Ashley doesn’t like mornings. She prefers things quiet. She doesn’t want that kind of attention.

As if it had been my choice.

Apparently, this year Marissa had decided I did want it.

I smiled, blew out the candle, and played the role of a pleasantly surprised daughter.

If I didn’t know better and if I hadn’t seen the messages Amy pulled, the comments Marissa made behind my back over the last months, I might have believed she’d changed.

On the surface, she treated us equally now.

Every now and then, though, the mask slipped.

A passive-aggressive remark here.

A backhanded compliment there.

Old habits leaking through the polish.

That evening, grandparents came over for dinner.

Brandon’s parents. Marissa’s mother.

I watched them all with new eyes.

My father’s parents were warm, affectionate in a reserved way. They treated Apple and me the same, even in my last life. Equal gifts. Equal attention. Equal expectations. And I couldn’t help wondering how much they’d known back then and why they’d helped sell the lie that Marissa was my mother.

Then there was Marissa’s mother. My supposed maternal grandmother. She behaved like she had every right to claim me. Soft smiles. Patronizing touches. Fake affection.

But all I could see was a woman who had taken advantage of my real grandfather’s silence and shame, who had demanded blood money to disappear quietly, who had raised a daughter who learned early how to manipulate and take what wasn’t hers.

She doted on Apple, of course. Hovered. Praised. Fussed.

Just like Marissa.

I smiled through dinner. Answered questions. Played the grateful daughter, the dutiful granddaughter.

But inside, I was cataloging everything. How everyone was pretending we were a normal family, pretending nothing was rotting under the floorboards.