"You don't dare write it? That's what I thought."

"If you can't reproduce it, then I refuse to believe you're my daughter."

She bit her lip, hesitating for a long time. Neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke.

Emma let out a sigh. "Mom, I'm pregnant. Why are you putting me through this?"

"The exam was ten years ago. How could I possibly still remember it?"

I smiled coldly.

"Anyone else might forget. But you're Emma Sullivan. My daughter was born gifted. Photographic memory."

"Emma, if you're afraid to write it, that tells me everything."

She looked at me again, twice, and sighed.

After a long pause she picked up the pen, lowered her head, and began to write—stroke by careful stroke, achingly slow.

I stood beside her, staring without blinking, barely remembering to breathe.

Fifteen minutes later.

A complete exam essay, finished.

I picked it up.

The room tilted. Cold washed through my entire body.

The handwriting was identical to the original essay from ten years ago.

Down to the last stroke.

Every little habit in the pen strokes, every smudge where a wrong character had been scratched out and corrected. All of it, exactly the same.

A roar filled my skull, and my mind went completely blank.

How was that possible?

My hands trembled as I looked at her.

"How... how can your handwriting be identical to back then?"

She raised her eyes to mine, wide and glassy with the wounded look of a child accused of something she didn't do.

"Mom, I'm not lying to you."

"I am your daughter."

I shouted.

"Then what about the note from that blind girl at Saint Mercy Monastery?! Her handwriting was exactly the same as yours!"

"And the exam essay is confidential. How would some stranger know what you wrote on the national college entrance exam?"

Emma blinked, then shook her head with a quiet laugh.

"Because she's a scammer, Mom. That's all she is."

She pulled up a video and held it out for me to see.

"Mom, I spent years worrying you'd get taken in by those health-supplement hustlers, always trying to wise you up. And you still went and got played by some street-level con girl."

"I looked into her, just briefly, and the truth came right out."

"Anybody tells you anything and you just swallow it whole. A stranger says I'm not your daughter—something that insane—and you're ready to believe her over me."

"Why is it so easy for you to trust a stranger but not me?"

Her tears came in a rush, her face crumpling, lashes dark and wet—the picture of someone breaking down because she'd been wronged by the one person who was never supposed to doubt her.

My hands shook as I took the phone from her, eyes locked on the screen.

The video began to play.

It was the same blind girl I'd met at Saint Mercy Monastery, pressing notes into people's hands every time someone passed.

She hadn't only fooled me. She'd fooled plenty of older women just like me.

And she'd been detained by police multiple times.

"Mom, look. This is the alert the police posted."

"For that same blind girl. They've been looking for her for months."

"She's pulled this exact routine on so many people. I just never imagined you'd fall for it too."

Something clenched hard around my heart, and I couldn't get a single word out.

The image rose in my mind: that blind girl standing in front of me, a line of bloody tears running from her eyes, knocking her forehead to the ground, desperately trying to explain.

Writing it over and over again on that piece of paper:

"Mom, I'm your real daughter, Emma Sullivan! Please believe me!"

Could she really have been nothing but a con artist?

Emma's voice kept going beside me.

"Mom, I'm a university professor. I deal with cases like this all the time."

"That blind girl? This kind of thing is never one person working alone. It's a whole ring behind her."

"Think about it. If what she told you were true—if she really was the daughter you lost ten years ago—blind, mute, crippled—how exactly would she have kept herself alive all this time?"

It hit me like a slap I deserved.

Emma was right.

That woman had found someone to copy the handwriting, and used the fact that she was roughly the same height and weight as my daughter to put herself in front of me on purpose.

The whole thing could have been a trap, planned from the start.

All these years, I'd ignored my own flesh and blood and swallowed a stranger's lies instead.

Pushing Emma away again and again, even doubting she was really mine.

I raised my hand and slapped myself across the face.

"Mom was wrong… Mom was a fool."

Emma rushed forward and caught my hand. Her tears fell onto the back of it.

"Mom, I don't care if you yell at me. I'm only scared you'll stop wanting me."

My eyes burned as I pulled her into my arms.

"I'm sorry, Em. I blamed you for nothing. It was all Mom's fault."

"From now on I'll only trust you. I won't listen to anyone else."

Emma let out a breath against my ear and smiled. "It's okay, Mom. We're family. No scammer's going to break that with a few words."

But when I closed my eyes,

all I could see was the blind girl's face, impossible to shake.

So much sadness written across it, so much hurt.

Her face had been ruined, yet something about her still felt so familiar it ached.

A few days later, the blind girl found me again.

"Mom, what happened? Do you believe I'm your daughter now?"

She wrote the words on paper, her hand shaking with urgency.

I stared at her coldly. "Enough!"

"How long are you going to keep lying to me?"

"My daughter is safe at home. She hasn't left my sight in ten years. She has a happy family now, and she's pregnant."

"You honestly don't think a lie like that sounds ridiculous?"

My fury startled her.

She stood frozen for a long time, then without a second of hesitation, pulled two strands of hair from her own head and held them out to me.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I already knew.

But she still wrote it down.

"If you don't believe me, I'll go with you for a DNA test."

When the results came back, I stood there holding the report and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

I couldn't think straight.

Right there in black and white—the blind girl's DNA matched mine. She was my biological daughter.

I'd also had them run a fingerprint comparison while they were at it.

The fingerprints were a perfect match for Emma Sullivan.

My eyes went red on the spot. "What the hell is going on?"

The blind girl wept as her pen tore across the paper.

"Mom, just listen to me. Please, just listen."

"The day after the national college entrance exam, I went to summer camp—and someone grabbed me. They put someone else in my place."

"I never came back. For ten years, the person living beside you as Emma Sullivan has been a fake."

"She could be dangerous. She could be trying to hurt you. You have to be careful!"

I couldn't hold back any longer.

I made sure Emma was somewhere safe, then went straight home.

She was in the living room with her six-month belly, doing prenatal yoga.

I cut straight to it.

"Tell me who you are."

"Who sent you to take my daughter's place? What is your real name?"

She froze mid-pose and looked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Mom, have you completely lost it?"

"Or have you been watching too many soap operas? Where is this nonsense coming from?"

"Didn't I just explain the whole scam ring to you the other day? Have you seen them again? Did they get to you?"

Emma sighed—the kind of sigh that sounds like patience worn thin—and called Eustace.

"Dad, come home. Now."

"Actually, bring something for Mom's head while you're at it. She's decided I'm fake again."

Eustace came rushing back and fixed me with a cold stare.

"Deidre, what the hell is wrong with you now?"

"Emma finally gets maternity leave, comes here for a few quiet days, and you can't stop making her life miserable?"

Emma stood beside him, eyes red, nodding along.

"Mom, I've been your daughter for all these years. I've been right here beside you the whole time. Can you really not tell whether I'm real or not?"

"Some scammer feeds you a few lines and you believe them, but you won't believe me. Why?"

I spoke coldly.

"Then do you dare take a DNA test with me?"

The blind girl's results were already back. Black and white on the page—she was my biological daughter. I had the proof in my hands. That was why I was this furious, this certain.

But to my surprise, Emma just looked at me with a weary sigh.

"Fine. If that's what it takes for you to believe me, we can go today."

She said it without flinching, without even a flicker of hesitation.

That afternoon, we went and had the test done.

The results showed she was indeed my biological daughter.

"Well, Deidre? Got anything left to say? This was all you—paranoid, delusional. How was Emma ever not our daughter?"

I went numb, gripping the paper so hard my knuckles ached.

How was this possible?

I checked it over and over. There was nothing wrong with the results.

Afraid someone might have tampered with the sample midway, I insisted: "Do it again."

I waited until Emma was asleep in the middle of the night, took a strand of her hair, and had a second test done in secret.

The results came back identical.

The Emma standing in front of me was also my biological daughter.

"Mom, I've been telling you. You're imagining all of this."

"Look at me—I look just like you. Compare me to my childhood photos. There's no difference at all."

"So how could I possibly not be your daughter?"

But the moment the words left her mouth, I cut her off, my face drained white.

"No. That's impossible."

"Something is wrong. There has to be."

A thought struck me and my head snapped up.

"Emma. When you were little, you were allergic to mango. One bite—just one. If you break out in a rash, I'll believe you."

Eustace cut me off, face like stone.

"Deidre, enough."

"She's about to give birth and you're pulling this?"

"She's pregnant. You want her to eat something she's allergic to? Are you trying to hurt her?"

"If anything happens, can you live with that?"

He signaled to the bodyguards beside him, and they pulled me away.

"Deidre, your mental state is getting worse by the day."

"Paranoid delusions, convinced someone's impersonating your daughter. You're not far from full-blown dementia at this rate."

He gave the guards a look. A moment later one of them was prying my jaw open, trying to force pills down my throat.

Then—like a wire snapping—I grabbed my phone and went live.

I aimed the camera straight at Eustace and Emma, pointed at them both, and said:

"I know exactly what's going on."