“You’ll just sit there telling me what isn’t true.”
That hurt more than the yelling.
At night, I would check the locks and pause outside her bedroom.
She was only a few feet away.
But Los Angeles felt like it was still between us.
And then something happened that frightened me even more.
Against my better judgment, I started studying Max too.
I knew he couldn’t be Lily’s father.
I knew that.
But the resemblance was unsettling.
Lily even had some of his expressions.
Her biological father had rarely spoken about his relatives.
Could Max somehow be related to him?
A distant cousin?
An uncle?
Something?
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I didn’t know.
But I refused to tell Lily any of that without evidence.
Then one evening, I walked into her room and saw a payment page open on her phone.
She quickly pulled it against her chest.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
I took the phone.
She was about to send three hundred dollars.
Almost everything she had saved.
“To who?”
She looked away.
Someone online had contacted her after she left comments under Max’s photos.
The person claimed to work for him.
He said Max remembered me.
He said Max suspected Lily might be his daughter.
And if she wanted a private DNA test, she first had to pay a confidentiality fee.
My blood went cold.
“Lily, this is a scam.”
“You don’t know that.”
“The account was created four days ago.”
Silence.
“His name is spelled wrong.”
She looked down.
“And he told you not to tell
an adult.”
Her face crumpled.
I canceled the payment.
For one second, I thought that would finally end the fantasy.
Then she whispered,
“That doesn’t mean the real Max isn’t my father.”
That was the moment I became truly afraid.
Someone had almost taken her savings.
The next person might ask her to meet somewhere.
That night, I found Max’s official agency website.
I stared at the contact email for almost an hour.
Then I wrote.
My name is Anna, and I desperately need your help with my fifteen-year-old daughter.
