Chapter 2
I kept my head down, messily wiping away my tears, my throat feeling unbearably dry.
Emma thought I didn't want to leave, so she steeled herself and said, "Sophia, the Bennetts can't keep you here.
"Every time I see you, all I can think about is how my own daughter has suffered for more than ten years, being bullied and hurt. So please leave."
She couldn't finish before she started crying.
Emily sat on the couch, nervously twisting her fingers, her face full of vulnerability.
She said, "I know it's hard for you to let Sophia go, Mom. Maybe Sophia hates me, too.
"But ever since I was little, none of the kids wanted to play with me. Sophia, could you stay and keep me company? Please don't bully me as they did.
"Then Emma won't feel so bad."
The sound of Emily's voice instantly dragged me back to my high school days.
Back then, she used to act all friendly, grabbing my hand and dragging me to the bathroom with her.
She'd say, "Nobody wants to play with me. Sophia, can you be my best friend?"
Her soft, innocent face started to overlap with the one I remembered from high school, and suddenly, it morphed into that cruel look as she forced my head underwater.
My breath caught, and I couldn't help but step back.
"No, that's not necessary," I mumbled.
James frowned and snapped at me, "Sophia, what's with that attitude? You owe Emily.
"You have no manners at all. Do you still not know your place? You're not one of this family anymore."
James's sudden words made my eyes prickle with tears.
"James," I whispered, my voice trembling.
He shot me a cold look.
"Don't call me that. I'm only Emily's brother now," he said coldly.
I shut my mouth and kept my head down, swallowing the bitterness that burned in my chest.
"I'm sorry. I'll leave now," I said.
This time, nobody tried to stop me.
After the Bennett family kicked me out, my childhood best friend, Chloe Smith, was the one who took me in.
She couldn't understand it either when she heard what happened.
Chloe said, "When my grandma first met you, she said you look so much like your grandma, Lily Bennett. Are you sure you're not one of the Bennetts?
"And everyone in the Bennett and Quinn families has that same eye shape, and so do you."
I was still feeling low, but managed a weak smile.
"Emily has that same eye shape as well, and she looks a lot like Frank," I said.
"Did she always have double eyelids?" Chloe asked.
I couldn't remember.
"Sophia, maybe you should get a DNA test, too. Seriously, something about all this feels off," Chloe said.
Even now, I still couldn't accept that I wasn't one of the Bennetts. Emily's sudden appearance messed me up so badly that my mind was a tangled mess.
The more I thought about it, the weirder it seemed.
I snapped back to reality and asked Chloe to help me dig into whether Emily's mother had any ties to our family. She agreed without hesitation.
Seven days after I left the Bennett family, James cornered me at school.
It seemed that he didn't want to see me, but he had no choice but to come.
"Sophia, Mom is sick," he said.
My steps faltered for a moment, but I kept moving, trying to sidestep him.
James looked like he was about to lose it, barely keeping his anger in check.
"She wants to see you," he said.
I looked at James, the brother I had spent my whole life with, and in the end, I went home alongside him.
Emma was sick. She was lying in bed with an IV drip, her brows furrowed with worry as if sadness would never leave her face.
When I walked into her room, her eyes brightened for a moment, but then the light faded away.
She probably thought again that I wasn't her daughter. I could see it in her eyes.
I kept quiet, pretending it was nothing as I sat down at her dressing table.
"Have you been doing okay these days?" she asked softly.
I tried hard to hold back the tears stinging my eyes and replied in a low voice, "I've been staying with Chloe. I'm alright."
"That's good," she murmured.
While Emma was looking down, wiping her tears, I quietly plucked a long strand of hair from her hairbrush and hid it in my hand.
We fell into silence after that.
Emma opened her mouth a few times, but she never said anything. She wanted to ask me to move back in, and I could see it. But if she did, how could she face Emily? That was why she kept quiet.
I sat with her for an hour, and her mood softened. She was finally able to take her meds.
Emily had been standing in the doorway for a while. It wasn't until Emma noticed her that she let go of her gloomy expression and put on a sweet, innocent smile.
"Dad told me to bring Sophia down for dinner," she said.
Emma nodded, as if the thought had come back to her, and urged me, "Go on. I had the cook make all your favorite dishes today."
I saw Emily's expression grow darker.
As I followed Emily to the turn in the staircase, she stopped.