Bullied for being adopted, Ivy spends her life feeling unwanted, until a letter, a will, and a quiet act of love change everything. In a story about survival, second chances, and choosing your own path, Ivy finally steps into the life she was never supposed to have… and makes it her own. I was three years old when my parents adopted me.
After struggling for years to have a third child, a girl to “complete” the family, they brought me home. From the outside, it looked like a dream: two big brothers, a sweet little girl, and a house full of love. But inside the house, it was something else entirely.
Liam and Josh were two and five years older than me. From the beginning, they treated me like a stain on the family photo. They said things when our parents weren’t around… sharp things, cruel things.
Things that no child should have to hear. “You don’t belong here, Ivy.”
“You’re not even blood.”
“You’re the reason that Mom and Dad are always tired.”
And guess what? It didn’t stop with them.
Our cousins, Emma, Chloe, Noah, Ryan, Ava, and Blake… all joined in. They made fun of the way I looked, the way I dressed, the fact that I had no baby pictures on the mantel. And the adults?
They weren’t any better. Aunt Deborah acted like I was furniture that just showed up one day. Uncle Frank never made eye contact.
Even the neighbors whispered about me being “the charity case.”
The only person who ever made me feel like I wasn’t a mistake was Grandpa Walter. He’d pull me into his lap and tell me stories about his childhood, about fishing in the summer and how he fell in love with Grandma at a school dance. He taught me how to garden, how to cast a fishing line, how to patch a tear in my jeans.
He told me I was stronger than I knew and every time one of the cousins tried to corner me at a barbecue or pick on me at a birthday party, he was there, stepping between us. “You don’t mess with my girl,” he’d say, his voice low and steel-edged. And then he would take me into the kitchen and slip me a sweet treat, usually a chocolate-covered donut or a cupcake.
But then, when I turned 18… the accident happened. It was raining. My parents were coming back from a weekend trip, something they’d planned months before.
A semi ran a red light. The impact was instant. Gone.
Just like that. The funeral was a blur of black umbrellas and pitied glances. Everyone spoke in hushed tones, as if volume might summon more tragedy.
I stood between Liam and Josh, and neither of them held my hand. I was the only one who didn’t cry, and somehow that made me the cold one. No one saw the way I clenched my fists to stop from shaking, my nails digging into my palm.
Our aunt and uncle, Deborah and Frank, were named as our guardians. Within a week, I was living in their house. And the nightmare only deepened.
They didn’t even try to pretend. I was the one doing the laundry, scrubbing the bathtub, setting the dinner table. I became invisible until someone needed something.
I was Cinderella without the fairytale… with no fairy godmother, no ball, just chores and silence. Deborah snapped at me over crumbs on the counter. Frank barely acknowledged I was in the room.
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