But it was not me in that house.

She had told them I died at six years old. Six. That was the year she fell off the monkey bars and cracked her wrist. I slept in the hospital chair two nights in a row because she was afraid of being alone. I still remember how she cried when they cut her favorite sleeve to make room for the cast. I promised I would sew her a new one. And I did. But none of that mattered now. She had rewritten history and killed me in the process. And worst of all, she had replaced me with a better version—a gentler face, a softer voice, a more camera-friendly kind of love, someone who could say all the right things without the rawness. Someone who never had to yell at her to study or cry in the bathroom when the rent check bounced or slap her own hand for scraping leftovers off hospital trays just to feed her kid.

That woman didn’t earn the right to be called mother, but she got it anyway. And I—who carried that girl inside me for nine months, who tore my body apart to bring her into this world—was edited out of the story like a typo.

I backed away slowly before the door shut again. I did not want them to see me—not her, not the photographers, not that actress pretending to be what I am. She would not have the decency to look ashamed.