On the first day of high school registration, I was filling out my personal information when I happened to glance at the form on top of the pile. Name: Zoe. Father: Keith. Occupation: Director, Apex Industries. I froze. I pulled out a photo on my phone—our family of three standing in front of the Apex Industries headquarters—and compared the names again and again. My dad is Keith. Apex Industries is my grandfather’s company. If Zoe was my dad’s daughter, then who was I? I immediately dialed my dad’s number. “Dad,” I began, my voice tight, “is there something you’re hiding from me?” There was a pause on the other end, then his voice returned, breezy and cheerful. “What could I possibly hide from you, sweetheart? Just focus on your first day. I’ll bring you a treat when I get home from my meeting.” I forced a smile into my voice, and after hanging up, I immediately went to find the mother and daughter who had just left. I caught up with them at a turn in the hallway. 1 The taller one was the mother, maybe in her mid-thirties, with a cascade of brown, wavy hair. The shorter one was the girl, Zoe, thin and with her mother’s eyes. But the rest of her features—her nose, her chin, the shape of her face—were a near-perfect mirror of my father’s. My heart plummeted. I stepped in front of them, blocking their path. “How old are you?” I asked the girl, my voice raspy. She looked startled. Before she could answer, her mother went into a full-blown panic. Her face turned chalky white, and her hands began to tremble as if she’d just seen a monster. “Zoe, you… you go on back to class. I need to have a word with this student.” Zoe gave me a final, curious glance and walked away. The woman let out a shaky breath, her eyes darting nervously. “You…” “I saw your daughter’s registration form,” I said, my voice flat. “The teacher mentioned her father is a director at Apex Industries. I was just curious.” I didn’t wait for a response. “When did you meet my father?” Right there, in the busy school hallway, I laid my cards on the table. The woman’s hands, which had been hanging loosely at her sides, clenched into tight fists. She shot a panicked look around, then forced a brittle smile. “Oh, that. My daughter is from a single-parent home. I was afraid she’d be sad, so I just… made up a name to comfort her.” She gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “Someone that important? How could I possibly know someone like that?” As she spoke, she casually brushed a stray curl from her face, a deliberate gesture that flashed a massive, seven-carat pink diamond on her left hand. My mother loves pink diamonds. Last year, a seven-carat ring exactly like that one was auctioned at Sotheby’s, right around her birthday. I had reminded my dad about it a month in advance, begging him to get it for her. I even helped him keep it a secret, planning a huge surprise. But on her birthday, the gift my dad presented was a cheap knockoff from Amazon, something that cost less than twenty dollars. He told me his flight had been delayed and he’d missed the auction. He promised he’d buy her something even better when he had the time, but for now, this fake one would have to do, so she wouldn’t be disappointed. It turned out he hadn’t missed the auction at all. He had just given the real diamond to someone else. The real one went to his mistress. The fake was for my mom. A wave of pure hatred washed over me. I met the woman’s challenging gaze, a cold smile touching my lips. “That’s a beautiful diamond, ma’am. Where did you get it?” I let the question hang in the air for a beat. “My mother has one just like it.” The woman—Lynn, I would later learn—had clearly not expected me to recognize it. The color drained from her face. She snatched her hand back, hiding it behind her. “What… what diamond? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “I have to go, I have things to do at home.” “And by the way,” she added, her voice a desperate whisper, “don’t mention any of this to your family. We wouldn’t want any misunderstandings.” She pushed past me and practically fled, her hurried retreat looking suspiciously like a getaway. Pathetic. The word echoed in my mind. I didn’t watch her go. I pulled out my phone and called our driver. “Come pick me up.” His voice was surprised. “Miss Chloe? It’s your first day of school. Aren’t you staying for classes?” My eyes dropped to my phone as I typed a quick message to my grandfather’s assistant, Daniel, asking him to pull every record of my father’s unusual activities for the past seventeen years. My voice was unnervingly calm. “No. I’m going home to deal with a family matter.” 2. When I got home, my mother was in the kitchen brewing a fragrant herbal remedy. My father suffered from hereditary arthritis, and the change of seasons brought him nights of agonizing pain. My mother, worried sick about him, had spent the last seventeen years traveling the country, consulting specialists, and learning to prepare these complex treatments. Seventeen years. In three more years, they would have celebrated their twentieth anniversary. And now, I had just discovered that for almost the entirety of that time, my father had been cheating on her. My eyes stung. I walked up quietly behind my mother. She was forty-two this year. Her figure was immaculate, her skin smooth and glowing—the picture of a woman who had lived a life of ease. But her hands told a different story. Her nails were stained yellow from the herbs, her palms were calloused, and the backs of her hands were dotted with the faint, silvery scars from countless small burns. All from preparing my father’s medicine. A tear splashed onto the floor. Before I could say anything, she turned around. “Chloe, sweetheart, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?” she asked, her face etched with concern. She immediately started wiping my tears away. “Did someone bully you at school? I’m calling your father right now…” “Don’t tell him!” I shouted. Meeting her shocked and worried eyes, my own trembled. I forced the words from my throat. “Dad… he’s cheating.” “The woman’s name is Lynn. She was a student he used to sponsor.” Like an automaton, I pulled the file Daniel had sent me from my bag and laid out the pages for her to see. “They first met eight days after your wedding. He gave a lecture at her university. That night… they slept together.” “When you were three weeks pregnant, Dad bought an apartment across the street from our house. The deed is in her name.” “While you were suffering from morning sickness so severe you couldn’t eat, he was across the street, eating home-cooked meals she made for him. While your legs were swollen in your third trimester, keeping you awake all night, he was in her bed with her.” “Even when you were giving birth to me, when you were hemorrhaging on the operating table, he was texting her, reminding her to eat on time so she wouldn’t hurt the baby in her belly.” “Mom, can you believe it? While you were pregnant with me, she was pregnant too. That illegitimate daughter… she’s only eight months younger than me.” I wanted to laugh, but tears just kept falling, splashing onto the documents. My mother stood frozen, her lips trembling uncontrollably. “How… how is that possible? Your father and I have been married for seventeen years. You’re all grown up. He couldn’t possibly…” I reached out and wiped her tears away, my own voice hollow. “Mom, do you remember when Dad took me to the amusement park when I was little and almost lost me?” She nodded, her red-rimmed eyes clouded with memory. “Of course, I remember. Your grandmother was in the hospital, and I was with her. Your father said he’d take you to the park for the day, and the next thing I knew, you were gone. He was beside himself with guilt, just sitting on a bench outside the park, crying. He said if he couldn’t find you, he didn’t want to live.” “When the park staff finally found you, he was so relieved and terrified. For the next month, he wouldn’t let you out of his sight. He even stopped going to work, just to stay with you.” “That was when I knew,” she whispered, her voice choked with a sob, “that your father truly loved you. I knew I hadn’t married the wrong man.” I flipped to the next page in the file. “What if I told you it wasn’t an accident?” “What if I told you that Dad deliberately tied my balloon string to a railing so he could go on the Ferris wheel with her?” “He thought a simple string was enough to keep a five-year-old from wandering off. He didn’t care that the park was crawling with kidnappers back then.” “And I wasn’t found by the staff, Mom. I was rescued by the police from the back of a kidnapper’s van.” “What?” My mother stared at me, her face a mask of horror. “I was only five. I was so traumatized that I developed temporary amnesia about the event.” “You think he stayed by my side because he loved me? No. He was afraid I would remember and expose him. He was afraid of losing Grandfather’s support.” The words hung in the air, and I finally broke. I threw my arms around my mother and sobbed. I was angry—furious that my father had cheated, that he had lived a lie for seventeen years. I was hurt—devastated to learn that the father I had loved for sixteen years had never really loved me at all. And my heart ached. It ached for me, and it ached for my mother. After what felt like an eternity, my phone vibrated. It was a group message for my new class. 【As per school tradition, there will be a mandatory parent-teacher conference for all new students this evening. Please inform your parents.】 One by one, students replied with “Got it.” Then, I saw someone tag Zoe. 【Zoe, is your mom coming again tonight? I’ve still never met your dad.】 The person who sent it must have been an old classmate of hers. Zoe didn’t reply. But just then, a message from my father popped up on my phone. 【Chloe, didn’t you want to go to that concert? I got you tickets for tonight. Two of them, so you and your mom can go together.】 My blood ran cold. I typed back: 【The school just announced a mandatory parent-teacher conference tonight. We can’t go.】 He replied instantly, without hesitation. 【A conference is just a formality, it’s not important. You miss this concert, and who knows when they’ll tour again.】 【Be a good girl and listen to your dad. Go to the concert. I’ll talk to your teacher for you.】 The chill in my heart deepened. My fingers trembled as I typed my reply. 【Okay. I’ll listen to you.】 The moment my message sent, Zoe replied happily in the class group chat: 【Both my mom and dad are coming tonight.】 【Awesome! I finally get to see what your dad looks like.】 Staring at the cheerful exchange, my mother and I looked at each other, and a slow, cold smile spread across my face. “Mom,” I said, “for tonight’s conference, bring Grandfather. We’re all going.” I was dying to see the look on my father’s face when he saw us there.
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