Chapter 3

The day after the divorce, I went back to the Foster house for my things.

My clothes were already packed into boxes.

Emily was standing at the closet holding the first white dress Carol had bought me when I came home at eighteen.

When she saw me, she put it down fast. "Sophia, Mom asked me to help pack for you."

I looked around the room.

My pictures had been taken down, and Emily's jewelry box was sitting on the vanity.

Carol followed me in. "You're moving out anyway. The room will only sit empty. Emily has a lot of clothes, so she can keep some things in here for now."

I bent down and closed the box.

My quiet seemed to make her uncomfortable, and her voice picked up speed.

"Sophia, don't start in about us playing favorites.

"Have we treated you badly all these years?

"Since you came home, Emily has given up everything. She even gave up the engagement with the Bennetts."

She stopped, as if she had said too much.

I looked up. "What about the engagement?"

William walked in right then. "Mom."

I looked at him, then back at Carol. "Finish the sentence."

Carol gripped her hands together, and in the end she said it.

"At the start, both families assumed it would be Emily and Charles. Then your grandfather found out you were the biological daughter, and he insisted the Foster engagement should go to the real Foster daughter.

"Whatever your grandfather said in this house was final, so Charles had no choice."

She paused, and her voice dropped. "It's a shame he went so suddenly two years ago. Nobody can hold Charles to anything now, and nobody is left to defend that engagement for you."

I understood her. "So all of you have thought all along that I stole my husband from her too."

"That's not what we said."

"But it's what you've all thought."

Emily started crying again. "Sophia, I really did try to let it go. On your wedding day, I wished you every happiness."

I looked at her. "So while you were sleeping with him, was that you wishing me happiness too?"

The color drained out of her face.

William frowned. "Sophia, don't put it like that."

"She can do it, but I'm the ugly one for saying it?"

Nobody spoke after that.

I went back to packing.

At the back of a drawer, there was an old tin box full of the sticky notes I wrote when I first came to the Fosters.

Carol didn't eat cilantro. Howard took his medicine at eight. William took his coffee black. Emily was afraid of thunder.

The one at the bottom was about Charles. He had a bad stomach, so he was never supposed to drink without eating first.

William saw them, and something complicated crossed his face. "You kept these?"

I closed the tin. "I forgot to throw them out."

My phone started ringing. It was Charles.

I didn't pick up, not the first time or the second or the third, and then I turned the phone off.

Carol frowned. "Fine, you're angry at us, but you won't even talk to Charles? Divorced or not, the two families are still connected."

I picked up the box. "Which two families?"

I had barely gotten downstairs when Howard came home. He saw my luggage, and his face darkened. "You can move out, but if reporters come to you in the next few days, don't say anything careless."

That stopped me. "Why would reporters come to me?"

"People online are digging into your divorce and saying Emily broke up your marriage. The family is going to set the record straight tomorrow."

"Set it straight how?"

Howard's voice stayed flat. "By telling the truth.

"Charles knew Emily first. And the Fosters aren't going to push out the daughter we raised for over twenty years to take the blame because you came back."

I turned to him. "And when a reporter asks how you choose between the daughter you gave birth to and the one you raised, what will you say?"

Nobody answered.

I laughed a little. "I see.

"Twenty years ago, her birth mother traded me away once.

"Twenty years later, you've decided her reputation looks bad, so you're about to trade me away again."

Howard said, "Sophia, a family has to look at the bigger picture."

I dragged the box toward the door. "Then the rest of you go ahead and look at it.

"Stop using me to fill the gap."