Chapter 29 Just One Signature
The months slipped by, and a day ago, I turned eighteen.
Marissa came into my room that morning singing softly, carrying a single muffin with a candle stuck into the top.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” she smiled brightly, as though we’d always had this tradition.
We hadn’t.
No previous birthday of mine had ever started with singing. I had never been woken up with candles or balloons. And yet, whenever a relative asked, because Apple liked to brag about being woken up to songs and decorations, Marissa always brushed it off.
Ashley doesn’t like mornings. She prefers things quiet. She doesn’t want that kind of attention.
As if it had been my choice.
Apparently, this year Marissa had decided I did want it.
I smiled, blew out the candle, and played the role of a pleasantly surprised daughter.
If I didn’t know better and if I hadn’t seen the messages Amy pulled, the comments Marissa made behind my back over the last months, I might have believed she’d changed.
On the surface, she treated us equally now.
Every now and then, though, the mask slipped.
A passive-aggressive remark here.
A backhanded compliment there.
Old habits leaking through the polish.
That evening, grandparents came over for dinner.
Brandon’s parents. Marissa’s mother.
I watched them all with new eyes.
My father’s parents were warm, affectionate in a reserved way. They treated Apple and me the same, even in my last life. Equal gifts. Equal attention. Equal expectations. And I couldn’t help wondering how much they’d known back then and why they’d helped sell the lie that Marissa was my mother.
Then there was Marissa’s mother. My supposed maternal grandmother. She behaved like she had every right to claim me. Soft smiles. Patronizing touches. Fake affection.
But all I could see was a woman who had taken advantage of my real grandfather’s silence and shame, who had demanded blood money to disappear quietly, who had raised a daughter who learned early how to manipulate and take what wasn’t hers.
She doted on Apple, of course. Hovered. Praised. Fussed.
Just like Marissa.
I smiled through dinner. Answered questions. Played the grateful daughter, the dutiful granddaughter.
But inside, I was cataloging everything. How everyone was pretending we were a normal family, pretending nothing was rotting under the floorboards.
The day after my birthday, I had opened a new bank account under my name alone and redeemed the lottery ticket I’d been sitting on for months.
Forty-nine million dollars.
I didn’t tell anyone. Money like that wasn’t something you announced.
Money meant freedom.
Money meant no one in that house would ever hold power over me again.
That same afternoon, using online listings, I had rented a small apartment in Cambridge, fully furnished, month-to-month, close to MIT.
I needed somewhere to land once the graduation party was over, because if that night went the way I expected it to, staying under my father’s roof would no longer be an option.
And it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
MIT started in the fall. Cambridge was where my life was heading. Renting there now made more sense than pretending I had a summer left in this town.
I told myself that was the only reason.
Nick coming back for the summer had nothing to do with it.
Amy called me a few hours later and asked to meet.
She said she’d found more information about my wonderful family.
Over the last few months, Amy had become one of the closest things I had to an ally. She was sharp, relentless, brilliant in ways most adults never noticed.
I changed into black tailored trousers, a fitted charcoal blazer over a soft gray top. A wool coat I loved and ankle boots. Minimal jewelry. Hair pulled back, clean and intentional.
On the walk there, I caught myself thinking about Apple, how I’d quietly collected evidence of her real nature.
At seventeen, Apple was already cruel, but not dangerous yet. She hadn’t reached the sell your sister to sex traffickers phase of her evolution.
For now, it was smaller things. Petty things.
Screenshots of her trashing her friends behind their backs.
Messages where she slept with boyfriends and then cried about “accidental feelings.” Threads she’d started on the school forum, rumors about me, about other girls. Just enough to fracture reputations without getting her hands dirty.
Regular high school drama.
Training wheels for the woman she would one day become.
I met Amy at a small café downtown. Amy waved from a corner booth. We ordered drinks, her iced latte, my black tea, and as soon as the waitress left, she slid her laptop onto the table and opened it.
“I think you’ll want to see this,” she said.
Emails.
Messages.
Call logs.
My father.
And his secretary.
I stared at the screen, my expression barely shifting.
“Still hasn’t learned,” I murmured. “Eighteen years later and he’s repeating the same affair.”
He’d cheated on my mother with his secretary. And now it was a different secretary, but same script.
Men like him never thought consequences applied to them. They just assumed the world would keep absorbing their damage.
Amy watched me carefully.
“So,” she said eventually, lowering her voice. “What’s your plan?”
I took a slow sip of my coffee and smiled. The kind of smile that had no warmth at all.
“Make a scene,” I said. “And leave.”
I’d always planned to leave after the graduation party. I couldn’t stand the idea of staying a second longer.
Amy blinked. “That’s it?”
I shrugged. “For now.”
The conversation lingered for a while after that, but nothing important.
By the time I got home, it was late. I slipped my shoes off by the door, already counting the steps to the stairs.
I didn’t make it past the living room.
Marissa was waiting there, arms crossed, posture rigid.
“Ashley,” she said. “Where have you been?”
I stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“It’s late,” she continued. “And you’ve been sneaking out more and more these days.” Her eyes flicked over me. “And look at you, dressed up like that. Mind telling me who you were with? And—”
She stopped abruptly.
Her gaze dropped to the papers in her hand. I watched the shift happen, the flicker of emotion, the quick recalculation.
When she straightened again, her expression had already smoothed over, her tone softening as if she were rewinding herself. The good mother slipped back into place.
“Ashley… sweetheart,” she tried again, “I didn’t mean to sound harsh. I’m just… concerned. And actually, I was waiting because I need your signature on something.”