On the previous Sunday morning, I had gone to Lizbeth's shop to pick a bouquet of flowers for my mother. I even dragged her to accompany me to pick out the best knee massager for my mother. Since the company had scheduled me to attend a training session on Mother's Day, I had to make sure to prepare everything in advance. I left the gift to Lizbeth and asked her to deliver it for me.

Lizbeth was not too keen on my idea. She thought I was completely foolish for even bothering to make my mother happy.         

As Aunt Wanda's daughter and my only true friend, Lizbeth was the one person with whom I could share everything. She knew all too well about my situation at home, how I had always been treated like an outsider. She had often told me that my family didn’t deserve my loyalty or affection. She did not understand why I still cared for them.           

“They don’t care about you. Why do you keep putting yourself through this?” she’d ask me over and over.    

However, I was stubborn. I refused to believe that all hope was lost. I had always clung to the belief that if I just loved them a little more, gave them a little more of myself, one day they would see me. They would appreciate me in the end, right?         

Even when faced with their indifference, I couldn’t give up until the day I died.                  

And, at this very moment, Lizbeth stood at the door. Her eyes were swollen and red. It was obvious that she had cried a lot ever since she learned about my demise.      

When my mother opened the door, Lizbeth could see the mix of surprise and impatience on my mother's face, which she quickly erased. And that sight almost set Lizbeth off.          

After she was able to control her emotions, Lizbeth said coldly, "Auntie, I'm here to do one last thing that Andrea had asked me to do. These are the flowers she picked for you last Saturday, along with the knee massager she bought for you."          

"Originally, she had work training today and couldn’t be here to celebrate Mother's Day with you, so she asked me to deliver these gifts on her behalf," Lizbeth continued, her voice trembling slightly with anguish.

My mother barely acknowledged her explanation. She did not see the gift properly and even responded with a dismissive sentence, "Oh, thanks. The house is a mess. I won't invite you in, Eh, just leave the flowers on the rack by the door."      

Without any care, my mother started to close the door.        

Lizbeth who was starting to get angrier by my mother's reaction, quickly blocked the door with her foot. Her voice rose, trembling with fury, "Auntie! Andrea is dead! Don't you have any feelings at all? Aren’t you sad at all? Do you even realize how much she loved you? Every word you said, she would take it to heart."     

"Just recently, you casually mentioned that your knees hurt. She remembered that. And on her only day off, instead of resting, she dragged me along to find this knee massager for you. It cost her an entire month’s salary, but she didn’t even flinch! Do you know how frugal she was? She barely spent money on herself, not even for new clothes. How can you, as her mother, be so heartless, so blind to what she did for you?"       

Tears welled up in Lizbeth's eyes as she spoke. Her voice broke with emotion. She poured out everything that she had bottled up in her heart for so long.     

For a brief moment, my mother’s face softened, as if something inside her began to stir. However then, just as quickly as possible, her face hardened again, as if she pushed away any trace of guilt.                

"She was my daughter. Of course, she should do things for me. That’s a normal thing for children to do for their mother, isn’t it?" my mother said coldly.    

"Do you really still consider her your daughter?" Lizbeth spat with an incredulous look on her face. "Then why won’t you even look at the gifts she carefully prepared for you? If it was Isabella who gave you these, would you be acting so disdainful like this?" 

"Enough!" my mother snapped. "Don’t you dare compare her to my Isabella? I won’t waste any more time talking to you. Leave!"        

After she said that, my mother tried to forcefully slam the door shut in Lizbeth's face.

Lizbeth held the door. Although she was seething with rage, she still managed to give my mother a bitter smile. Then she reached into her bag and pulled out a blue leather book from it. It was my secret diary.

Ever since I was a child, whenever I felt upset, I would go to Lizbeth's secret hideout with Lizbeth to vent my grievances. That blue notebook had been my emotional outlet for over two decades. It held countless things my parents knew nothing about.

Lizbeth and I had once promised to guard each other's secrets. Yet now, she was breaking that promise. I knew she was doing it out of a sense of justice. She did not want to let me fade away without anyone knowing the truth.

"This is Andrea's diary," Lizbeth said. The sarcasm dripped heavily from her voice as she handed the diary to my mother. "I hope after reading it, you’ll still feel the same."

Then without waiting for my mother's answer, she shoved the diary into my mother's hands and walked away. Her footsteps echoed in the hallway.

My mother stared at the notebook for only a moment before tossing it toward the trash without a second thought. However, as soon as the diary fell, a photograph slipped out, fluttering to the floor.

The photo showed my father, my sister and an unfamiliar woman. The joy on my father’s face in that picture was unmistakable. His wide smile triggered a flood of unease feeling in my mother.

Her feet, which had been set to walk away, froze in place. She slowly bent down and picked up the photo, then scrutinized every detail. The expression on my father's face filled her with dread. The suspicion started to gnaw at her heart.

Unable to shake her growing fears, she turned toward the discarded diary. Driven by an urgent need for answers, she picked it up and flipped through the pages with trembling hands. The deeper she read, the more the walls of her world began to crumble.

Before I returned to my hometown, I had uncovered my father’s secret, which was he had another family.

My older sister, Isabella, was not just "adopted" from an unknown family but actually, she was my father's child from his second family.

After a private investigator followed him for several days, I discovered that the other woman in his life was his first love. She was ten years older than him. Because of the age gap, my grandparents fiercely opposed their relationship. So, my father could not marry the woman he loved and, in the end, he decided to marry my mother.

However, my father had only married my mother to appease his family. Secretly, he never ended his affair with the woman he truly loved. Together, they had a child and she was Isabella.

Both of us were his daughters, but Isabella was born from the woman he loved, which was why he showered her with affection. To legitimize her presence in our family, he lied to my mother. He convinced her that adopting a child would "bring a son into the family."

However, in fact, the reason why my mom did not get pregnant for a long time was because my dad had deliberately stopped it.

I wrote all of this down in my diary, along with the photo that confirmed everything. My original plan was to reveal this dark truth to my mother during our family’s Day of Death Celebration when the family came together.

However, before I could say anything, Isabella found out about my investigation.

That day, during The Day of the Death Festival, after walking a fair distance, my mother realized that she had forgotten to bring the offerings. So, she sent me back to our old house to retrieve them.

As soon as I arrived at the old house, my phone rang. It was the investigator that I hired. I was too busy discussing everything that he had discovered that I failed to notice that Isabella had entered the house and accidentally heard the direction of our conversation.

She then hid behind the door and eavesdropped. However, she became panicked when she knew I knew the truth. So, she grabbed an iron shovel that was resting by the door. And before I could do anything, Isabella struck me on the head.

I immediately blacked out.

Fearing exposure, she decided to finish the job. Without hesitation, she set the old house on fire, trapping both me and the building in flames.

That was how I was burned alive.

Little did she know that I would eventually reveal the truth to my mother in the most unexpected way.

When she discovered the truth from my diary, my mother was shocked. She completely lost her mind. She could not believe that the man he loved for thirty years had only been playing games with her. Moreover, the adopted daughter that she cherished more than her own daughter for more than twenty years was the product of his affair.

With trembling hands, she locked my blue diary and the photo in the storage room where I once lived. Her entire body felt as though it had been drained of energy and she slumped down onto the sofa, feeling overwhelmed and defeated.

When my father came back home from work, my mother was still sitting frozen on the sofa. She stared at him with her mind in turmoil. She was torn between wanting to confront him and holding back.

When he saw the flower and the knee massager on the table, my father smiled and said, “It is such a thoughtful gift. Must be from our dear Isabella, right? That girl really knows how to care for her mother, doesn't she? She's truly our little angel.”

My mother's face turned pale, but she remained silent.

“What? You don’t like the gift? Oh, come on, she made the effort! You should appreciate that. If it were that unlucky girl Andrea, do you think she’d even remember to give you anything?”

“Enough!” my mother shouted angrily.

"Andrea is your own flesh and blood. How can you speak about her like that?"

Taken aback by her sudden change in demeanor, my father reached out to touch her forehead. He was so confused by her outburst, but my mother swatted his hand away.

“What’s wrong with you? Why are you mad at me over Isabella’s gift?”

“Shut up! All you ever talk about is Isabella. Isabella that, Isabella this. Let me tell you something, this gift that you’re so quick to dismiss was from Andrea, not Isabella.”

My father’s body stiffened as if he had just seen a ghost.

After hearing what had really happened, he scoffed and said dismissively. “A bunch of flowers and a cheap knee massager? Of course, only Andrea would give you something like that. Just wait, when Isabella gets back, she’ll bring you something much better.”

He laughed mockingly. “That unlucky girl, working in the funeral business and never even giving us any money. Raising her was worse than raising a dog. Good riddance, I say.”

At that moment, rage flooded my mother’s face. She slapped him hard, yelling, “Are you even human? She was your own flesh and blood!”

Caught off guard, my father stumbled from the impact, his face twisted from the blow.

“What the hell? Have you lost your mind, hitting me like that? Looks like I’ve been too soft on you all these years!”

With fury in his eyes, he lunged at my mother, then he beat her with his fists and kicked her with his legs.