The Daughter They Threw Away Came Back Wearing His Ring Chapter 02

The Daughter They Threw Away Came Back Wearing His Ring Chapter 02

On Spencer’s end, I heard the sharp screech of brakes.

“Baby, wait for me at the studio. I’ll have my secretary cancel the dinner and come to you right now.”

Spencer only knew I had cut ties with my birth family.

He knew things between us were bad.

He did not know the rest.

Hearing the panic in his voice, I changed my mind.

“No. Go to the dinner. I’ll come with you tonight.”

After I hung up, I stared at the photo I had taken while my hands were shaking.

In the frame, my mother was frowning, my father had his fist clenched, and Gina stood with her arms crossed.

Next to them, the dog had its tongue out and its eyes full of eager submission.

Exactly like me when I was small.

I had understood very early that they did not love me.

Back then, the sentence I heard most often was, “Your life exists because Gina suffered.”

Gina had severe aplastic anemia.

No donor registry had ever found her a good match.

Out of desperation, my parents had another child.

That child was me.

Their plan had been simple.

Use me as a donor, then send me away.

They did not even put real effort into making me part of the family.

No family insurance card.

No bedroom.

No space in the house that was mine.

No place in family photos.

When the first transplant finally happened, the result was devastating.

The graft did not work the way they had prayed it would.

Gina’s counts still crashed again and again.

From then on, whenever her doctors needed stem cells or marrow, my parents dragged me back to the hospital.

I became the spare body they kept in the house for emergencies.

My mother held tiny Gina and sobbed until she almost passed out, grieving for every bit of pain her precious girl would have to face.

My father’s eyes were bloodshot as he punched the hospital wall and cursed God for torturing his darling.

No one noticed me on the other bed.

My lips were cracked.

My throat was so dry I could not make a sound.

That was the earliest memory I could still reach.

Thirst.

A brutal, endless thirst that ran through my whole childhood.

In their eyes, I was the reason Gina never fully recovered.

I was the thing that had forced its way into their family and refused to leave.

As punishment, they named me Addison.

Not because they loved the name.

Because I was an addition.

Extra.

Unwanted.

I had no room of my own and slept on the living-room couch.

Everything I wore had belonged to Gina first.

On rare days when my mother softened and gave me a cookie while handing out snacks, Gina would cry until she could barely breathe.

She would not stop until my parents swore every bit of their love belonged to her alone.

I copied her tantrums.

I cried.

I begged.

All I got in return were slaps.

Even then, I understood one thing very clearly.

Whether I received any love at all depended entirely on Gina’s mood.

So I started working hard to please her.

When it was time for elementary school, Gina insisted my parents put me in her class, even though I was two years younger.

She told our classmates I was the little maid her parents had given her.

I carried her backpack.

I ran her errands.

I did her classroom chores.

I never complained.

I was desperate for my parents to see me.

Desperate for them to acknowledge that I was part of the family.

That was why the day of my monthly procedure became the day I looked forward to most.

On that day, my parents stayed by my bedside.

They watched my blood and stem cells move through the tubes, then carried everything away like treasure for Gina.

For those thirty minutes, they looked at me.

Those thirty minutes of being fully seen were enough to keep me alive through every other day I spent as an invisible person.

Just when I thought life would always stay that way, everything changed.

By accident, I tested into the gifted track at one of the best high schools in the state.

On the day the results came out, another parent clapped my father on the shoulder.

“Your younger daughter is incredible. So young, and already first in the gifted program.”

My father looked confused.

“Younger daughter?”

He had to think for a moment before my name came back to him.

“Addison?”

My mother pointed at the banner hanging by the school gate.

“They put up a sign. Addison is first place?”

For the first time, they looked at me without the eyes reserved for a sinner or a blood bag.

My father even patted my head and said I had done well.

My whole body went still, then hot.

It felt unreal, like I had been waiting my entire life for that one touch.

I was so dazed that I forgot to check Gina’s face.

Their smiles lasted all the way home.

It was only when we sat down to eat that they realized Gina was gone.