On Christmas Day, my parents decided to add my sister Chloe's name to the family trust. As the lawyer prepared the documents, he glanced at me. "And this young lady? Should she be included as well?" My mother waved a hand dismissively. "No need. She's just a foster child." Ever since Chloe was brought back home, I—their biological daughter—had become the outsider. All because Chloe insisted she was the only daughter in the family. If anyone so much as mentioned that I was blood-related, she'd have a PTSD episode—screaming, crying, the whole breakdown. Eventually, everyone just accepted it: "The Haper family only has one real daughter. The other one's a foster kid." At first, I tried to correct them. I was their real daughter too. But my parents would go pale and snap at me: "Chloe already struggles with insecurity. It's such a small thing—do you really have to push her over the edge?" Then came the day I got my acceptance letter from Stanford. A background investigator showed up at our door. "Ms. Kent, what is Kate's relationship to you?" My mother's voice was breezy. "Oh, she's just a foster child we took in." Right there, I froze. After the investigator left, I took matters into my own hands. I filed for independent status and booked a one-way ticket to California. Since they refused to claim me as their daughter, then in seven days, I'd stop being the extra person in their house.
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