Matthew ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t come to fight.”
“Then you showed up poorly dressed for a victim.”
“Danielle doesn’t know everything.”
“And you do?”
He went silent. There was my answer. I sat across the table from him. I didn’t offer him water. I didn’t offer him coffee. I didn’t offer him the compassion he had never shown me.
“Speak.”
Matthew swallowed hard. “The loan was Dad’s idea. He said you’d never find out because he was going to cover it by selling some land. Danielle signed because she desperately needed cash. I… I only helped get a copy of your driver’s license.”
A slow wave of disgust washed over me. “Only?”
“I didn’t know they were going to forge your signature.”
“But you knew they were going to use my identity.”
“Dad said it was for an internal guarantee, some tax thing. I don’t know, Val. You’re the expert in this stuff.”
“Don’t call me Val.”
He looked down. For the first time, I saw Matthew without a Porsche, without a smile, without Dad cheering him on. He was just a debt-ridden man who had confused being spoiled with being capable.
“What did Mom mean when she said I wasn’t the daughter they were going to choose?”
His jaw trembled. “You shouldn’t find out like this.”
“Well, you should have picked a better time to steal three and a half million dollars from me.”
He sat across from me. “Danielle was sick when she was a baby.”
I wasn’t expecting that. “What?”
“She was born with a severe blood disorder. She needed treatments, transfusions, genetic matches. Mom couldn’t have any more kids after her, or so the doctor said. Dad looked for options.”
I felt a chill run down my arms. “Options.”
Matthew wouldn’t look at me. “Adoption. But not like a beautiful, legal adoption. There was a doctor. A private clinic in Dearborn. Poor families. Single mothers. Babies without clear paperwork.”
I stood up so fast my chair screeched against the floor. “Shut up.”
“Shut up.”
But he didn’t stop. “They brought you home when you were two months old.”
My breathing began to falter. Two months old. I didn’t have any newborn photos. I had never cared. That was a lie—I had cared. But my mom always said, “They got lost in a move.” My dad would say, “Don’t be so dramatic, you’re acting like a detective.” Danielle would say, “Ugh, what a drag with your existential crises.”
Matthew continued, “Dad said you were a match. That God had sent you to save Danielle.”
I had to lean against the table. A match. Not a daughter. A match.
“What did they do to me?”
Matthew cried. And seeing him cry didn’t make me feel tender; it made me angry. Because he had kept that truth hidden while I funded his entire lifestyle.
“I don’t know everything. I was just a kid. I overheard things. Blood. Bone marrow. Procedures. Mom said you cried a lot after the hospital visits. Dad said you wouldn’t remember it.”
I covered my mouth. Suddenly, my inexplicable fear of needles made sense. My childhood nightmares of bright white lights. The lower back aches my mom called “attention-seeking behavior.” The small scar on my lower back that they claimed was from a childhood fall.
I hadn’t been the dull daughter.
The room spun. Matthew stood up. “Valerie, if you go after Dad, he will destroy you.”
I looked up. “He’s been trying to do that since the day he bought me.”