My dad died a hero when I was six, saving someone’s life. Grandma’s health was failing, and debt collectors kept showing up at our door. But no matter how poor and tough life got, my mom never remarried. She always said my dad was a hero. She told me to be like him, to always do good. One weekend, a wealthy classmate I’d helped invited me to spend the weekend at her place. “Dad, honey, open up! I brought a friend home!” She knocked on the door and shouted. But when the door opened, I saw it. Her dad had a face that was identical to my dad’s. “You must be Skylar, right?” Brooke Stone’s dad greeted me warmly and politely. The resemblance was shocking, absolutely uncanny! I stared at his face, stunned, rooted to the spot. The familiar features, the slightly downturned corners of his mouth, and especially that triangular scar beneath his eye. Aside from a few more lines of age, he was almost identical to the man in the photos my mom always reminisced over. Even his English had a subtle hint of the regional accent I knew so well. “Sir, are you from the Southern area?” I asked instinctively. “How did you know that?” He looked at me in surprise. “But I left over twenty years ago and haven’t been back since.” Twenty years ago? My dad disappeared when I was six; it had only been sixteen years since then. The timing didn’t quite add up. Did my dad have a twin brother? Or could there really be two unrelated people in the world who looked exactly alike? I followed Brooke into the guest room, still feeling deeply unsettled. “Are you feeling okay?” She asked, concerned. I opened my mouth, a little speechless. It felt wrong to just blurt out that her dad looked exactly like mine. I glanced around the room. On the desk was an old family photo of their family. The date on it was twenty years ago. I would have been two years old then. Brooke in the photo must have been just a baby. Besides that, there were their names. Arthur Stone was probably her dad. My dad’s name was Arthur Grant, only the first name was similar. “I’m fine, I just think your parents are both so good-looking. How did they meet?” I carefully chose my words. “My mom said that about twenty years ago, she was on a business trip and got robbed. My dad chased them away.” Brooke seemed happy to tell her parents’ love story, quite excited. “They fell in love at first sight. After my mom’s work was done, my dad followed her to New York City…” Riverwood. I caught the keyword. I barely heard anything else after that. That was my hometown. If this was a coincidence, it was too much of one. “Do you know where your dad is from?” I eagerly interrupted her story. “I don’t know that. I heard my grandparents passed away a long time ago, which is why my dad had nothing holding him back from leaving the Southern area, and he never went back.” My grandma passed away when I was eighteen. Could he really have no connection to my father? My mind was a jumbled mess of thoughts. It was almost dinner time, so I decided to try a subtle test. At the dinner table, I casually brought up the story of my dad dying a hero saving someone. Hearing that, he snapped his head up, his mouth twitching slightly. That expression, it was so much like my dad! Maybe Arthur Stone *was* the supposedly deceased Arthur Grant!
Learning my dad wasn’t dead, my first reaction wasn’t joy. It was shame and burning anger. I wanted to grab him by the collar and demand answers. Why didn’t he come home if he was alive? He disappeared underwater when I was six, but Brooke was only two years younger than me? Even if he didn’t care about my mom and me, what about Grandma? Did he not care about her at all? Recalling the beautiful face of the woman in that family photo, and Brooke’s casual mention of her maternal grandfather’s prominent status, I ultimately swallowed the questions on the tip of my tongue. Whatever the answer, it would only be humiliating. “Sir,” I asked, “You must be very happy to have a daughter like Brooke, right?” I thought I heard him let out a subtle sigh of relief. “Happy, yes, but raising her costs a fortune,” He took my words, his voice betraying unconscious tenderness and indulgence. “I see you as a daughter too, Skylar. Tomorrow, I’ll take you two to the mall. Buy whatever you like, it’s on me.” A cold dread settled in my heart. I felt no joy from his words. Treat me like a daughter? I thought he was just guilty, trying to buy my silence. “No, thank you. You should save that for Brooke instead.” I emphasized. “But you’re our guest…” He still wanted to persuade me, but Brooke, having finished eating, stuck out her tongue at him. “Dad, you’ll put too much pressure on her!” She stood up and took my hand, leading me towards her bedroom. “But I have a lot of clothes I barely wore. You can accept those, right?” Listening to her describe which clothes she’d only worn once, and which winter coats were filled with goose down, I offered a relieved smile. My feelings for Brooke were complicated, but I held no real ill will towards her. Firstly, my father died when I was young, so I didn’t have a deep emotional connection to Arthur Grant. Secondly, she truly was a kind girl, without a hint of a spoiled rich kid’s attitude. I squeezed her hand gently, seriously saying: “Thank you, Brooke. These clothes are perfect; I won’t have to buy anything new for winter this year.” In a flash, the weekend was almost over. Staying at the Stone’s house for a few days had been an emotional ordeal. Because every time I looked at that familiar face, I couldn’t help but think of my mom, who had worked so hard to raise me, and Grandma, who, on her deathbed, had called out for her son. Brooke was still packing in her bedroom. I sat restlessly in the living room, but a single sentence from him froze me in place. “Your grandmother… is she doing alright?” He covered his face, his expression hidden. Only his eyes were glistening. Crocodile tears, I sneered inwardly. “She passed away four years ago. She was still calling out Arthur Grant’s name when she died.” He seemed shocked by the news. After a long moment, he said in a hoarse voice, “It’s my fault.” Too weary to watch his performance, I stood up and pushed my suitcase, ready to leave. But he caught up to me and pressed something into my hand. “There’s two hundred thousand dollars in here,” His expression was serious. As if the man who had just been tearing up and speaking hoarsely was merely a figment of my imagination. “From now on, we have no connection. Don’t even think about trying to cling to me for anything!” “Most importantly, you’re not to reveal our relationship to anyone.” Hearing those words, I trembled with rage. Did he think all these years of wrongdoing could be bought off with two hundred thousand dollars? If I kept quiet and didn’t expose my connection to him, it would only be because I didn’t want to, not because he’d bribed me. “My mom raised me, and you didn’t pay a single cent of child support!” “I’m graduating soon; I don’t need your money even more now.” I didn’t hesitate to throw the bank card onto the floor, then took a deep breath and looked at him with scorn. “You should be grateful you have a good daughter.” “Otherwise, I absolutely would have exposed your disgraceful actions for everyone to know!”
Back at school, I called Mom as usual to let her know I was safe. Listening to her rambling concerns on the phone, a wave of warmth washed over me. When we started talking about finding a job after graduation, Mom suddenly sighed, “If only your dad were here, he had so many friends, finding you a good job would be no problem.” Listening to her use various memories to prove how capable my dad was, for a moment, I almost blurted out the truth. Arthur Grant wasn’t dead at all. He’d abandoned everything, changed his identity, and was now Arthur Stone. He wanted nothing to do with us. He wished we believed he had passed away. But even after hanging up the phone, I still said nothing. In Mom’s heart, her husband was her spiritual pillar. He was her guiding star, an idealized figure. But the real Arthur Grant? He was an unfilial son to his mother, a scoundrel who abandoned his wife and daughter. When I discovered his true identity, he showed no remorse. He hypocritically asked about Grandma but showed no concern for Mom. If I told her the truth, how heartbroken would she be? It was better to leave things as they were. The next day, my roommate and I went to a large lecture class. Sitting in the classroom, I felt like people were talking about me. But when I turned around, all the gazes vanished. Only whispers faintly reached my ears. “Is she the homewrecker?” “Looks like it. I thought this kind of thing only happened in TV shows, but there are actually people who want to be their friend’s stepmom?” “Girls like that are always the same. As long as a guy has money, no matter his age, they’ll go for him.” I was confused. Were they talking about me? When did I become a homewrecker? “Skylar, look at the campus gossip page!” Ashley, my roommate, was full of shock, frantically tapping my arm. [Anonymous Post: Skylar Grant, a senior in the Special Education program, was invited to her friend’s home for the weekend. She then tried to seduce her friend’s father, attempting to become a homewrecker and ruin her friend’s parents’ marriage.] [Update to previous post: Skylar Grant’s friend, seeing her poor circumstances, even gave her expensive clothes. Is this how she repays her? She’s an animal.] Looking at the baseless posts on my phone screen and the malicious speculations in the comments section, I felt like my throat was constricted, barely able to breathe. Without a moment’s hesitation, I knew who the poster was. The incident of Brooke giving me clothes happened in her home. Besides her and me, only her father knew. No fourth person. But she had been so friendly to me yesterday. Why would she deliberately slander me? Weren’t we friends? I waited anxiously for class to end. Hearing that Brooke was at the gym, I stormed over, seething with anger. At first, she denied making the post. But when I pointed out that only she at school knew I had accepted her clothes, her demeanor shifted; she adopted a defiant, “what have I got to lose” attitude. “Was anything in the post wrong?” “When you were at my house, you were so broke you even took my old clothes, and you accepted a bank card from my dad with two hundred thousand dollars on it!” “If that’s not being a shameless homewrecker, what is?” Brooke glared at me hatefully. “Skylar, I’m telling you, if anything happens to my parents’ marriage, I’ll never forgive you!” As her words landed, the surrounding students burst into an uproar. They seemed surprised that I had actually accepted money from an older man. And two hundred thousand dollars at that. This seemed to confirm the rumors that I was a homewrecker and a gold-digger.
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