After My Death, Mom Destroyed the Family

Lizbeth held the door. Although she was seething with rage, she still managed to give my mother a bitter smile. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a blue leather book from it. It was my secret diary.

Ever since I was a child, whenever I felt upset, I would go to Lizbeth's secret hideout with Lizbeth to vent my grievances. That blue notebook had been my emotional outlet for over two decades. It held countless things my parents knew nothing about.

Lizbeth and I had once promised to guard each other's secrets. Yet now, she was breaking that promise. I knew she was doing it out of a sense of justice. She did not want to let me fade away without anyone knowing the truth.

"This is Andrea's diary," Lizbeth said. The sarcasm dripped heavily from her voice as she handed the diary to my mother. "I hope after reading it, you’ll still feel the same."

Then without waiting for my mother's answer, she shoved the diary into my mother's hands and walked away. Her footsteps echoed in the hallway.

My mother stared at the notebook for only a moment before tossing it toward the trash without a second thought. However, as soon as the diary fell, a photograph slipped out, fluttering to the floor.

The photo showed my father, my sister and an unfamiliar woman. The joy on my father’s face in that picture was unmistakable. His wide smile triggered a flood of unease feeling in my mother.

Her feet, which had been set to walk away, froze in place. She slowly bent down and picked up the photo, then scrutinized every detail. The expression on my father's face filled her with dread. The suspicion started to gnaw at her heart.

Unable to shake her growing fears, she turned toward the discarded diary. Driven by an urgent need for answers, she picked it up and flipped through the pages with trembling hands. The deeper she read, the more the walls of her world began to crumble.

Before I returned to my hometown, I had uncovered my father’s secret, which was he had another family.

My older sister, Isabella, was not just "adopted" from an unknown family but actually, she was my father's child from his second family.

After a private investigator followed him for several days, I discovered that the other woman in his life was his first love. She was ten years older than him. Because of the age gap, my grandparents fiercely opposed their relationship. So, my father could not marry the woman he loved and, in the end, he decided to marry my mother.

However, my father had only married my mother to appease his family. Secretly, he never ended his affair with the woman he truly loved. Together, they had a child and she was Isabella.

Both of us were his daughters, but Isabella was born from the woman he loved, which was why he showered her with affection. To legitimize her presence in our family, he lied to my mother. He convinced her that adopting a child would "bring a son into the family."

However, in fact, the reason why my mom did not get pregnant for a long time was because my dad had deliberately stopped it.

I wrote all of this down in my diary, along with the photo that confirmed everything. My original plan was to reveal this dark truth to my mother during our family’s Day of Death Celebration when the family came together.

However, before I could say anything, Isabella found out about my investigation.