“Because your father just arrived at a notary office with a girl claiming to be you.”
I felt the ballroom disappear. The live jazz band kept playing. The servers passed by with trays of hors d’oeuvres. Harper laughed beneath a cloud of gold balloons. My dad raised his glass as if he were the proudest man in the world. And meanwhile, someone was trying to steal my mom’s house using my own face.
“Where?” I asked.
“A notary in Downtown Chicago. I’m on my way there now. Don’t go into the ballroom, Maya. We need to catch them in the act.”
I looked at the envelope in my hands. “No. First, they’re going to see me.” I hung up.
I walked toward the stage. My dad spotted me when I was already ten feet away. His smile dropped instantly. Evelyn went white. Harper stopped posing for a photo. I walked up the steps without trembling.
“Good evening,” I said into the microphone.
The band stopped playing. Everyone turned around.
My dad approached quickly. “Get down from there, Maya.”
“Why? Don’t you want to show off your other daughter too?”
A murmur rippled through the hall. I pulled out my test result and held it up.
“98.7th percentile. I did get in. I lied to see what my father would do when he thought he could no longer use me.”
Evelyn clenched her jaw. My dad tried to snatch the paper from me, but I stepped back.
“And it worked. He kicked me out of the house. Just as he planned.”
Harper’s face changed. “Dad?”
He turned to her. “Don’t listen to this nonsense.”
Then I played the audio. Evelyn’s voice came through the small Bluetooth speaker I had hidden in my purse. “Maya just turned eighteen, Thomas. You can finally take the house her mother left her.”
The entire ballroom froze. Then my dad’s voice played: “When she fails the exam, I’ll kick her out. She’ll realize that she’s worth nothing without me.”
Someone gasped, “Oh, no.”
Evelyn tried to step forward, but Aunt Claire appeared by my side like a brick wall. “Don’t even think about it.”
My dad lowered his voice. “Maya, turn that off. You’re making a fool of yourself.”
“No. Making a fool of yourself is sending a stranger to sign for me while you toast to Harper.”
Harper dropped her glass. It shattered on the marble floor. “What?”
My dad looked at me with pure hatred. The mask was entirely gone. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, I do. And so does Mr. Harrison.”
At that moment, a man in a gray suit rushed into the ballroom, holding his cell phone. It was my mom’s estate lawyer. Behind him were two police officers and a woman from the State’s Attorney’s office. The silence turned into fear.
“Thomas Sterling,” the lawyer said, “we need you to come with us.”
My dad tried to laugh. “This is a family party.”
“No,” I said. “This was a family trap.”
Evelyn grabbed Harper’s hand. “Let’s go.”
But Harper pulled away. “Did you sell her mom’s house?”
Nobody answered. The answer was written all over their faces.
I stepped down from the stage. The crowd parted as if I were on fire. Outside, the Gold Coast kept shining with its expensive steakhouses, black SUVs, and pristine sidewalks. But inside that hall, the lie smelled like cold sweat.
We went to the notary office. The fake Maya was still there. She was a girl my age, with her hair dyed like mine and a fake ID on the desk. When she saw me walk in, she burst into tears.
“They paid me,” she said. “I didn’t know.”
Evelyn yelled: “Shut up!”
The notary was pale. On the desk lay a folder with the supposed transfer of rights for the Evanston house. That house my mom had left protected. That house near tree-lined streets, climbing wisteria, hot dog carts, and the weekend farmers’ market where colors, fresh produce, crafts, and Sunday noise all mixed together. The house where my mom taught me how to ride a bike. The house they wanted to turn into a plane ticket for Harper.
The State’s Attorney investigator reviewed the documents. Mr. Harrison handed over the will, my real ID, and the recording. He explained that a property transfer deed had to be formalized before a notary and then registered in the County Recorder’s Office; it could not be done with a fake identity and a forged signature.
My dad was no longer speaking. Evelyn was.
“That house belongs to the family. She’s just a child.”
“I’m eighteen,” I said. “And I have a longer memory than you have shame.”
My voice trembled at the end. I hated that it trembled. But I didn’t stay quiet.
Harper was sitting on a chair in the hallway. She was still wearing her massive, sequined party dress. She looked like an abandoned princess in a sterile public office. She looked at me.
“Did I know?” The question wasn’t for me. It was for herself.
Evelyn turned around furiously. “I did it all for you.”
Harper cried. “Don’t use me to steal.”
That sentence hit Evelyn harder than any insult.