Chapter 18 Not Her Daughter
The DNA results arrived on a Thursday afternoon. A simple email notification.
Subject: Your DNA Results Are Ready.
I stared at it for a full minute, frozen, thumb hovering, mind blank, before I finally opened it.
Four test panels against a white background.
Four different tests.
Four answers I couldn’t take back.
Test 1 — Apple Richards ? Brandon Richards
Probability: 99.996% — Inclusion
Test 2 — Apple Richards ? Marissa Richards
Probability: 99.997% — Inclusion
Apple was their daughter.
No surprise. No crack in the universe. Just confirmation of the obvious.
I scrolled down.
Test 3 — Ashley Richards ? Brandon Richards
Probability of paternity: 99.998% — Inclusion
So my father was my father.
I had expected that. The height, the eyes, the hair color… there had always been a faint resemblance I could never entirely deny.
Then came the last panel.
Test 4 — Ashley Richards ? Marissa Richards
Probability of maternity: 0.00% — Exclusion
A flat, clinical rejection. No wiggle room. No error margin. Just zero.
I stared at the line, reading it again even though I didn’t need to. The words were simple, almost indifferent, but they hit with the precision of a scalpel.
And then something in my chest loosened.
Not relief.
Not fear.
Something colder.
Something that had been waiting for this moment far longer than I had allowed myself to admit.
Apple and I shared a father, but not a mother.
Marissa had spent my entire life choosing Apple over me. Now I finally understood why.
She had never loved me because I had never been hers to love.
A quiet laugh slipped out.
Thin. Disbelieving. Almost hollow.
Every cold look.
Every uneven rule.
Every time she’d said, Why can’t you be more like Apple?
It had never been about behavior.
It had been blood.
Or the lack of it.
Strangely, the truth didn’t sting. Not the way I had imagined it might. If anything, it slid into place too easily, explaining everything with surgical clarity, like a puzzle piece that had been waiting in plain sight.
My gaze dropped back to the screen, ready to close it. When something beneath the main panel caught my eye.
The Relative Match Data.
Shared DNA: 26.4%
Predicted Relationship Range:
Half-aunt / Niece
Grandparent / Grandchild
Half-sibling
I leaned back against the wall and let the phone rest on my knee. My eyes traced the numbers again and again.
26.4%.
Not enough to be her child.
But enough to be family.
Some kind of family.
Marissa wasn’t my mother…but she was related to her.
If Marissa wasn’t my mother…
Then who was?
Why had I grown up in a house built on lies?