Chapter 1

1: 1

The family group chat went off again. Thomas's wife, needling everyone the way she always did.

【Turns out the real daughter's worth less than an adopted son.】

【Won't part with a dime, year after year. Poor old couple, raised themselves an ungrateful snake.】

The relatives piled on, praising my brother for being so devoted.

Every year he posted screenshots of the forty thousand he supposedly wired home in support money.

I hadn't planned to say anything.

But once I saw the whole family debating how ungrateful I was.

I had to speak up.

【Shanna, I think you've got the wrong idea.】

【I send Mom and Dad forty thousand every year too.】

She wouldn't let it go.

She tagged me and told me to show proof.

To put out the fire, I drove to the bank.

Found a teller and pulled the statements on my mother's pension account.

Only then did I find out that the money I sent my parents every year got moved into my adopted brother's card by my mother.

Then wired back out again, under the name of support money.

Round and round it went. Their money never shrank, and my brother got praised for being a good son.

I was the only one left looking like a fool.

1. When I heard what the teller said, something in me went cold.

She told me, "Besides the forty thousand you deposit each year, this card has a linked supplementary card."

I couldn't help freezing.

"A supplementary card?"

"Yes, tied to a male account holder."

"For years now, once the pension hit the account each month, it was basically moved out that same day."

My hands were shaking as I listened.

I hesitated a moment, then took a photo of the statement.

And posted it straight into the family group chat.

【Mom, Dad, what is this?】

【Where's the money from the card?】

The chat went quiet for a good two minutes.

Neither of them answered me.

It was Thomas's wife who jumped in first, throwing it back at me.

【So where's the pension?】

【Mom and Dad have been retired five, six years. That's at least ten thousand-plus a month between them, right?】

【How's there only a few hundred left on the card?】

【Serena Whitney, you didn't spend it all, did you?】

I typed back, brows drawn.

【I'd like to know what's going on too. Let Mom and Dad answer.】

She sent a hand-over-mouth laughing emoji.

【What are you waiting for? Haven't you had the card the whole time?】

【If the money's gone, who else is there to ask?】

【That's hundreds of thousands, Serena. If you really spent it, cough it up. Quit playing innocent.】

Then my aunt suddenly chimed in.

【Serena, honey, not that I want to say it, but do you know how hard your parents worked to raise you?】

【Fine, you won't give support money. But spending the old folks' money on top of that?】

My uncle jumped in right after.

【Exactly. Old people live off that little bit of money. How could you do it?】

【I said it long ago. A married daughter is water poured out the door, gone for good.】

【Look at Thomas. Sends money home every single year. That's what a good child looks like.】

Then my cousin's wife echoed the rest.

【She always looked so respectable. How could she do something like this?】

【No wonder she went silent earlier. Guilty conscience.】

I stared at the screen, my chest tight, like something had lodged there.

I was the one sending money every year.

I was the one who never shorted them a cent.

And somehow I'd ended up the thief?

【Mom, Dad, say something.】

I tagged them both again.

【You gave me the card. You're the ones who opened the supplementary card.】

【You know exactly what's going on here, don't you?】

The chat went quiet again.

The relatives were all waiting, waiting for the old couple to say something.

More than ten minutes went by.

Finally my mother sent a voice message.

Her voice all wounded and put-upon.

"Serena… how could you be like this?"

"We gave you the card to look after, and now the money's gone, and you're asking us?"

"We want to know where it went too!"

I couldn't believe my ears.

My finger pressed on the voice button and I just didn't know what to say.

It took me a long while before I got out a single line.

【Mom, are you saying… that I took the money?】

"I never said that."

"But the card's been in your hands. There has to be some explanation, doesn't there?"

My father came right after.

"Enough. Stop fighting in the group. Have some shame."

First I laughed, then I felt the urge to cry.

I couldn't understand it. Why were they lying with their eyes wide open?

I was about to throw the transfer records out there.

When my mother's private voice message popped up first.

"Serena, Thomas is your brother."

"He isn't ours by blood, but you have to make allowances for how hard things are for him."

"He has no blood tie to us, he's sensitive about it, and your father and I have to look out for him a little more."

"This ends here."

"Don't go digging into it anymore, all right?"