The Fake Daughter is My Protector

Thirty below at the bus station. A woman in a fur coat. A bald man built like a bar fight. And a furious girl glaring at me like I'd stolen from her.

I stood there shaking in a coat two sizes too thin, looking at the three of them. They looked like they'd come to break somebody's legs.

These were my real parents. And the girl who'd been living my life for fifteen years.

"You that dense?" The furious girl got right up in my face and looked down at my feet. "You came all the way up here in those? You'll lose a toe before Christmas."

I started shaking harder. I'd read a hundred of these stories. I knew exactly how this one went. The real daughter comes home, and they make her life hell.

Then

Smack.

The woman's palm came down on the back of the girl's head.

"Wait till we get home," she said.

And then she was pulling the fur coat off her own shoulders and wrapping it tight around me.

Chapter 1

When I was fifteen, I found out I wasn't theirs.

Switched at birth. A hospital mix-up, fifteen years back.

I was the second daughter. The extra one. The mouth nobody wanted to feed. They'd had it in for me long before they had a reason.

The day the call came, Pa found me out back. Slop bucket in one hand, the baby strapped to my back, both of us shin-deep in the hog pen. That baby was my little brother, barely a year old. I'd raised him myself.

Pa hung up the phone. Called Ma inside. They talked low for a long time.

When they came back out, I was done. Out.

He stood there rolling a cigarette and blew the smoke straight into my face.

"Gertie. You're not our blood. Tomorrow you get on a bus up north, you find your real folks, and you send our real girl back to us."

He lit it, slow.

"Always knew you weren't a Puckett. Too mulish by half. Wasn't enough we fed youno, you had to go and waste good money on school. Let your real mama and daddy be the fools now."

The slop bucket hit the dirt.

"Pa... what did you just say?"

Ma's boot caught me in the side.

"You got hog hair in your ears? You are not ours. Get up north and bring our real girl home. She'll do like she's told. Marry young, marry quiet, be grateful for it. Not like you. All you ever did was cost us."

My other brother, the one big enough to talk, pointed at my face and threw out the word he'd picked up from them.

"You're not even my sister! You're the money-loser! Get out of our house!"

Pa grinned and rubbed the boy's head. Ma pulled him in close. The three of them, cozy as anything.

And me, standing in a yard that stank of manure, realizing I didn't have one square foot of ground left to stand on.

There was one thing I never let them take. One. They'd tried to marry me off already, the way they'd married off my older sister, gone at sixteen. I wouldn't sign. I wanted a little more school first. It was the only time in my whole life I ever told them no.

Next morning Pa threw a phone at my face. The cheap one, the one the baby had already cracked.

"You call me the second you land. Get that other girl moving. And if your real folks hand you money, every dollar comes back to me, you hear? Don't you forget who fed you all these years. And don't you get cute and run. I'll dig you out of whatever hole you crawl into."

I ducked my head and nodded.

Then I put on the one decent outfit I owned and got on the bus.

I didn't pack anything. There was nothing else to bring.

Chapter 2

The bus ground north, and I sat with my forehead on the cold glass, feeling something I didn't have a word for.

Leaving that house didn't break my heart. I'd known my whole life I was the spare one. The only thing that ached was the baby, the little brother I'd raised with my own two hands.

Outside, the green bled out of the world and left it white.

The farther north we went, the more scared I got. People up there talked like they were always fighting, I'd heard. Mean, every last one of them.

What would my real parents even be like? Fifteen years gone. Could they love me? And the girl who'd been living my life all this time. Would she hate me? Would she even agree to switch back?

Then I remembered the switched-at-birth soaps the girls at school used to trade. I dug out that cracked phone and watched every one I could find, half the night.

Each one left me colder.

In those stories the real daughter always got it worst. Thrown out by her own blood, or worked over by the impostor. Not one of them came out okay.

This wasn't a reunion.

I was walking into the lion's den.

When the bus was almost in, I worked up the nerve to call my mother. The police had written the number down for me, or I'd have frozen solid on some corner up here.

She picked up on the first ring. The voice on the other end could go through a wall.

"Hello? Who's this?"

I didn't know how to say it. I stammered a while before anything came.

"Um... ma'am? NoMom? It's... it's me, I"

Two seconds of silence. Then her voice shot up.

"Baby girl? Is that my baby girl?"

"Yeah." Dazed. "Mom, I'm at the bus station. Can you give me the address?"

She screamed.

"What did you just say? You're at the station? By yourself? Who let you come all that way alone?"

The questions came like buckshot. I didn't dare breathe.

She sounded angry.

I was scrambling for anything to smooth it over, and the line went dead.

I just stood there.

The doors hissed open and I shuffled out with the crowd.

The second I hit the platform, my eyes spilled over. It was so cold. Not just my hands, my feet, all of me. My eyelashes froze together when I blinked.

At the exit I had no idea which way to turn, so I hunched against a wall and folded myself as small as I'd go, like that might keep some of the cold off.

"Baby girl!"

That same voice, right on top of me.

My head snapped up. Three people, coming at me at a dead run.

The woman in the fur coat. The bald man. And the sour-faced girl who'd stolen my life.

I got more scared.

The woman looked like she hit, and it landed. The man didn't look like a good one.

And that girl looked like the last person on earth you'd want to cross.

Chapter 3

Sure enough, she came straight for me and looked me up and down like she was pricing a cow.

Here it comes. I've seen this part. I've seen every version of this part.

"You came all the way up here in those?" She nodded at my feet. "You'll lose a toe before Christmas."

My head was already down. "They're not fake," I said, quiet. "They just don't have a label."

She blinked. Then she laughed. Loud, from the belly, the kind that turns heads two tables over.

"Fake? Who said fake? I don't care if you got 'em off a truck." She stabbed a finger at the frozen ground. "It's twenty below and those are basically socks. Your feet'll snap right off."

My eyes went hot. The first tear was halfway up.

Smack.

Mom's palm cracked down on the back of the girl's head.

"Wait till we get home," Mom said.

The girl's mouth shut like a trap.

Great. Four minutes in and I'd already gotten her hit. She'd hate me for it now. I braced for it. The glare, the payback, whatever came next in the story.

It didn't come.

Because Dad grinned. This huge man who'd looked like he broke thumbs for a living, and just like that the whole mean face folded up and vanished.

"Baby girl," he said, and his voice came out soft. Almost shy. Way too small for a man that size. "Why didn't you wait for us to come get you? Your mom and me already bought the tickets."

Mom elbowed him aside. She was already shrugging off her coat. Big, heavy, fur-lined, still warm from her body. Then it was around my shoulders and she was tugging the collar up under my chin.

"Quit yappin'," she told him. "Look at her, she's froze half to death. Let's get this girl some food."

The coat swallowed me. Perfume and cold air and something warm underneath.

Maybe it was the fur. Maybe it was the heater kicking on in the truck. Either way my eyes blurred.

This was the part I never let myself picture. The part where somebody bundles you up because you're cold. Not because there's hauling to do, or scrubbing, or a baby to watch.

So this was what it felt like. To be somebody's to take care of.

* * *

They drove us to a restaurant with cloth napkins and a real chandelier.

Dad opened the menu and ordered like he was calling a raffle. Dish after dish after dish. I waved my hands. "That's too much, we'll never finish it."

Mom actually looked embarrassed. "Just make do tonight, baby. You came home so sudden, I didn't get to cook proper. Tomorrow you'll taste what I can really do."

I nodded, and my stomach knotted.

Here we go. This was the part. Exactly the part. They soften you up, then the food comes out and it's all her favorites, and the two of them orbit her like she's the sun, and if I lift a single fork it's war.

I snuck a look at them. They'd already been kinder to me than anyone had. So I made up my mind. Whatever the girl threw at me, I'd swallow it. I would not be the reason this table went to war.

Sure enough, the second the plates hit the table, Dad waved me toward the food and the girl grabbed the lazy Susan and spun it.

I put my head down and shoveled rice. Didn't look up. Didn't make a sound.

Except she wasn't spinning it away from me.

She was spinning it to pile up my plate.

"Eat this." Something fried and golden. "Best thing on the menu. Bet you don't get this down south."

"This one." Pork and cabbage, dark and steaming. "Dip it in the garlic. Go on."

And then, before I could catch up, she dropped something dark and lumpy on my plate.

"Blood sausage. Eat up. Puts hair on your chest."

My eyes went wide.

There it is. The story. This was the move. The disgusting thing, the dare, the trap. She'd make me eat it and cackle when I gagged.

But I could not let this house go to war.

The girl watched me, bright-eyed, waiting.

"Well? Eat it!"

I shut my eyes. Set my jaw. Picked up the dark, awful thing and brought it to my mouth.

Chapter 4

It's just sausage, I told myself. Still beats getting hit.

But before it reached my mouth, her hand shot out and knocked the fork clean out of my fingers.

"Hey! What are you doing?" She looked genuinely alarmed. "You don't eat the skin, you goof. You peel it first."

She picked one up, split the casing with her thumbnail, and popped the good part into my mouth before I could argue.

I chewed. Braced for awful.

It wasn't.

Oh.

It was so good.

After that the three of them wouldn't quit. Dad, Mom, the girl. Every time I cleared a spot on my plate, something new landed on it. I gave up and ate.

By the end I was slumped in the chair with both hands on a stomach round as a drum.

Do they run a different playbook now? Was the plan to finish me off with food?

Dad flagged the waiter for a pot of coffee and settled in to talk.

"Baby girl. We were so busy eatin' I never introduced you proper." He tipped his head toward the girl beside me. "This is Frankie. Older than you by two whole hours. She's your sister now. It's just the two of you, so you look out for each other."

I blinked. An only child. One kid, and they'd stopped there.

Where I came from, no house felt safe without a couple of sons in it. A girl was a mouth to feed until somebody took her off your hands. One daughter, just one, and calling it good. I couldn't picture it.

Mom leaned in careful, like she was testing ice. "Baby, back there... how was it? How many of you were there?"

My stomach dropped. Here it comes.

The second I opened my mouth about home, Frankie would howl. Call me a hick, a hillbilly, a hayseed. And if I let it show that it stung, Mom and Dad would take her side.

So I decided. Whatever Frankie said, I'd agree with it. I would not upset this table.

I took a breath and kept it flat and easy.

"There's four of us kids, besides our folks. I'm the second. One older sister, two little brothers."

Mom and Dad traded a look. Something crossed both their faces. Something like shock.

"That many?" Dad said. "So who'd you rather play with, your sister or your brothers?"

"Play?" The word came out strange. "I didn't have time to play."

They kept staring, so I explained it plain, the way you explain a thing you never once thought was strange.

"Ma and Pa worked the fields, so the house was mine. Laundry, cooking, feeding the hogs, minding the baby." I was counting it off before I could stop. "My big sister got married off last spring. They wanted to promise me to somebody too. I asked to stay in school two more years, so I told them no."

Mom's brows shot up. "What? How old are you? They wanted to marry you off?"

I scratched the back of my head. "Girls back home all do it, it's normal. And mythe folks who raised me, they weren't so bad, really. At least they let me finish middle school."

Frankie's hand came down flat on the table, hard enough to jump the cups.

"Not so bad?" She was already halfway out of her seat. "What is this, the eighteen-hundreds? That's not 'not so bad,' that's abuse. Who tells a kid she can't go to school? Who sells a kid off to get married?" She stabbed a finger at the window like they were parked right outside. "Give me a name and an address. I'll call the cops on 'em myself."

Oh.

She wasn't yelling at me.

My shoulders came down from around my ears. I turned to look at her, and something in my chest tipped sideways.

This wasn't how the story went at all.

Then Mom pulled me in.

Not a careful hug. She grabbed me like she was hauling me out of deep water, and the tears came all at once, hot against the top of my head.

"My baby went through all that," she got out, her voice splitting, "and I didn't know. Not one single thing." Her arms clamped tighter. "It's my fault. If I'd been more careful back then, if I'd counted your fingers one more time, none of it. None of it would've touched you."

Chapter 5

Dad took my hand and turned it over. He looked at the cracks across my palm, the calluses gone hard, and dragged a hand down his face.

"Baby girl. You listen to your daddy now. From here on, you live with us. You don't lift a finger. You go to school, you study, and I'll sell the shirt off my back to keep you in it."

Then he looked at Frankie. "You too. Both of you stay put. Neither one of you sets foot in that house again. You hear me?"

The warm thing that had just started up in me went cold.

I knew it.

They'd never let Frankie go back. Not in a hundred years.

So when it came down to it, it would be me.

* * *

After dinner, Mom and Dad drove us toward home. We passed a low building with steam rolling off the roof, lit up gold against the dark, and Frankie smacked the door.

"Stopstop the truck! Mom, Dad, pull in here!"

Mom leaned out, took one look, slapped her own knee. "Would you look at me, where's my head. Baby girl's first winter up north, she's got to get the full treatment! Frankie, take your sister in. Your dad and I'll run and grab her some clothes."

Frankie hauled me out of the truck.

I stared up at the sign and lost my nerve. "Frankie... what is this place?"

She waggled her eyebrows. "Best place in town. Come on. Let me show you how we do it up here."

I followed her in with my stomach in a knot. She swiped two towels off a stack at the counter like she'd done it a thousand times and towed me down a hall, until I saw the word on the door. WOMEN.

My heart came down out of my throat.

Oh. A sauna.

Then we reached the door and I locked up all over again.

Here it comes. This is the part from the stories. Where she sets me up to get shown up in front of a crowd, gets me so humiliated that Mom and Dad take one look and wash their hands of me for good.

Frankie rolled her eyes so hard I thought they'd stick. "Would you quit? Nobody in here's looking at you, I promise. Come on, before you freeze in the doorway." And she pushed me through, into a wall of heat.

It hit me all at once, thick and wet, wrapping right around me, and the breath went out of me in a rush.

A whole trip's worth of cold lifted off in one go. I about fell asleep on the bench.

Chapter 6

Once I was warmed all the way through, Frankie steered me to the showers and put a cloth in my hand.

"Scrub down good. Whole winter's ahead of you. Might as well start it clean."

She took the cloth back and did my shoulders herself, firm enough to sting, and I didn't fight it. I just let her.

The water ran off me darker than water should. Years of it, going gray down the drain.

My face went hot to the ears. I hadn't known I'd been carrying that much.

Then Frankie crouched down in front of me and took both my hands.

"Hey. Look at me." Quiet, now. "All that going down the drain? That's every rotten thing they ever loaded on you. It's off you. It stays here. From today on you've got a family, and nobody, nobody, lays a hand on you again. Welcome home."

Something broke open in my throat, and the crying just took me.

I looked at her, grinning at me through the steam, and I shut my eyes and made up my mind.

I'd stay through the holidays. Let myself have it, a mom, a dad, the whole thing, just once. And then I'd go back.

I was built for being ground down. I could take it.

But Frankie? Loud and bright and sure of herself? It would kill her.

* * *

Back home, Mom walked me to my room.

"Baby girl. Your sister and I picked it out together. Hope it suits you."

I stood in the doorway of a big, bright bedroom and couldn't make myself believe it was mine.

At the other house I never had a room. I shared with my older sister, and after they married her off, Ma said it had to be kept for the boy, so I moved into the storage room. No sun ever got in. Cold as a meat locker year-round. Every winter my knuckles split open from it.

This room was warm. It had everything. A real bed. A dresser. All of it. It looked like something out of a dream I'd never once let myself have.

My voice shook. "I love it. Thank you, Mom."

Mom smiled. "Good! And quit thanking me, we're family. You've had a long day, hon. Get some rest."

I nodded and nodded, and watched them pull the door to, and every wire I'd been holding tight since I stepped off that bus finally let go.

I dropped face-first onto the bed and pushed my face into the pillow. Even the air smelled like being happy.

Then the cracked phone in my pocket started going off like it wanted to break.

I dug it out. Pa.

I answered with my hand shaking, and it came down on me all at once.

"Well? Living like a little princess now, are you? Up north how long and not a peep out of you. Think you grew wings? Think you'll run? I'm telling you right now, Gertie, you try something cute and I'll break both your legs. You're up there. Get that other girl moving. Send her back."

I gripped the phone, clawing for something to say.

His voice climbed an octave.

"Don't tell me you haven't even told them yet. You ungrateful littleyou wait. I'll buy a ticket and come up there myself. Tonight."

I could feel the spit coming through the phone. I was shaking too hard to think, and I just started begging into it, the words falling over each other, none of them coming out right

Chapter 7