Who Stole My Daughter’s Future?

"Mom, what are you even saying? If I'm not your daughter, then who is?"

I clenched my fists and stared at her without blinking.

"Impossible. You're not my daughter."

"None of it lines up—not a single memory!"

Emma paused. Then she set the durian down and laughed.

"The night before the exam, you made me sweet rice balls in brown sugar syrup. Your own hands. And what I'm scared of is caterpillars—not cockroaches."

"Cockroaches are *your* thing. You shriek every time you see one, and I'm the one who charges over and smashes it with a shoe. Isn't that right, Mom?"

She caught my stunned expression.

Her smile stretched wider.

"I was messing with you. Look at your face."

"All right, all right. You're getting on in years—I won't pull that kind of joke again."

I stood there, numb, watching Emma scoop up the kitten and carry it off to be fed. Something in my chest unclenched—but it didn't settle all the way down.

Had I really… been overthinking this?

That evening, Emma turned to her father with a laugh just pointed enough to cut. "Dad, you'll love this. Mom bumped into some blind girl on the street today and actually decided I must be a fake. Her own daughter—an impostor. Isn't that hilarious?"

My husband Eustace blinked, then turned to me with a sigh.

"Stop letting your mind run wild. She just got pregnant. She needs rest. Don't say things like that and upset her."

"We raised this girl with our own hands. How could we possibly be wrong?"

I nodded. "Maybe I've been reading too many novels lately. I was overthinking it."

And that was the end of it.

But the unease wouldn't leave. It sat in my bones. More than once, I caught myself already on the road to Saint Mercy Monastery before I'd even decided to go.

Hoping to run into that blind girl again, just like the last time.

But I wasn't so lucky.

I sat there from sunrise until the last light bled out of the sky.

She never appeared.

Then one day, while I was out shopping, I saw her again.

She was just as agitated as before, limping toward me, making desperate sounds that weren't quite words.

When she saw the confusion on my face, she pulled out a pen and a scrap of paper and started writing.

I leaned closer—and the breath locked in my throat.

She had written:

Mom, please believe me. I really am your daughter, Emma Sullivan!

If you don't believe me, look.

Below those two lines, she wrote several more.

The blood drained from my face. My vision blurred red at the edges.

"Who are you? These lines are from my daughter's essay on the national college entrance exam. From ten years ago!"

"How could you possibly know what she wrote?"

My hands were shaking as I gripped the paper.

The blind girl nodded frantically, and two streaks of blood slid from her sightless eyes.

My heart seized. Could this girl really be my daughter?

Even the handwriting was identical.

I stumbled home barely able to keep my footing, and before I could even push the door open, my legs gave out.

"Mom?"

Emma opened the door and stared down at me.

"What are you doing sitting on the ground? The floor's freezing. Come inside."

I looked up at her unbothered face, and only one thought remained.

The handwriting. I had to see her handwriting.

I took out a sheet of paper and a pen and held them out to her.

"Emma. The essay you wrote for the national college entrance exam. Write it again. Word for word. Exactly."

The color drained from her face. She stared at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Mom, what's gotten into you? Out of nowhere, you want me to rewrite my exam essay?"

"I'm a university professor now. You want me to sit here writing something that childish? People would laugh me out of the room."

Her fingers curled tight, but she didn't pick up the pen.

I let the smile come—cold and thin.