Chapter 10
633words
I scrolled back through the saved surveillance footage. Part of it had been deleted, but I did manage to find screenshots from that day.
Could it really have been Mom?
In that instant, it felt like all the blood in my body rushed backward.
Why? Why would she do this?
Was I not her daughter? Why would she treat me like this?
Staggering backward, I bumped into the desk behind me. This caused a box to fall from the nearby bookshelf. The lid of the box popped open, and I saw photos from my childhood spilling out.
Instinctively, I picked them up to take a look. They were indeed pictures of me as a child, but among them was also Mom's diary.
After reading the diary, I instantly understood why she had treated me this way!
It turned out I wasn't really her daughter.
In her youth, she was caught up in a turbulent string of relationships and ended up pregnant without knowing who the father was. During childbirth at the hospital, a sudden power outage struck. And in the chaos, she switched her own baby with the newborn in the next bassinet.
That family was moderately well-off, and over the years, she secretly kept tabs on the child she had given away. Then, unexpectedly, she learned that the young woman had died in a car accident at the beginning of this year.
From then on, she became consumed with resentment. Why was I, someone else's child, still alive when her own daughter had died? It should have been me who'd died!
She spiraled into madness and, from that moment on, sought to ruin my reputation and make me suffer. That was why she deliberately lit the pleasure candle that day, only to end up with no useful footage at all.
But she still went ahead and used those screenshots to spread rumors and tarnish my name.
As I stared at the diary in front of me, my heart turned cold and numb, as if I had fallen into an icy abyss.
So, Mom wasn't my mother after all.
Just then, I heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor behind me. I turned to find Mom standing in the doorway for who knew how long.
A flash of panic crossed her face before she rushed in and tried to hide everything. But it was too late, as I had already seen everything clearly.
"So, I'm not actually your daughter at all."
My voice was filled with despair, and she seemed to let go completely, screaming back at me in her own breakdown.
"That's right! Why should my daughter have died while you get to live? You should've died too! It should've been you who died! Go to hell!"
As she yelled, she lunged at my throat with both hands.
I couldn't fight her off, and just as I was beginning to lose hope, Mr. Palmer rushed in from outside. After pulling us apart, he called the police.
Once the police understood the situation, they arrested Allison on charges of child trafficking.
At the police station, I met my biological parents. They were a refined, intellectual-looking couple with hair already streaked with gray, and their faces were etched with the profound grief of having lost a daughter.
After the truth came out, I couldn't accept having a mother like Allison, nor could I integrate into my new family. They had once been a happy family, but Allison's single moment of selfishness had destroyed it all.
When it came time for graduate school applications, I chose a city far away and started a new life there.
I escaped from that nightmare.
