If a car slowed outside our house, she rushed to the window and watched until it drove away.

Whenever I mentioned Los Angeles, she became furious.

“Stop asking me about that place!”

At first, I assumed she had fought with a friend.

Maybe been embarrassed by a boy.

But none of that explained the fear.

And none of it explained why she kept looking at me like I had betrayed her.

I finally decided to call one of the teachers.

Before I could, she called me.

“How is Lily doing after everything?”

I froze.

“After what?”

The teacher went silent.

“She won’t tell me anything,” I said. “She came home furious. I was actually about to call you.”

Another pause.

Then the teacher said,

“Wait. The principal told us your family had already been notified.”

My hand went weak.

The plate I was washing slipped into the sink.

“Notified about what?”

Her voice changed.

“So Lily really didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“I was afraid of that.”

I gripped the counter.

“Tell me what happened.”

She explained that on the last day of the trip, the class had returned to a studio lot.

At some point during the tour, Lily disappeared from the group.

My heart stopped.

“For how long?”

“Almost thirty minutes.”

They searched everywhere.

Eventually, security contacted them.

Lily had been found outside a restricted soundstage.

She had repeatedly tried to get past a barrier.

“Was she hurt?”

“No.”

“Then why was she trying to get inside?”

The teacher hesitated.

“That’s where Max was filming.”

“Who?”

She seemed surprised I didn’t know.

“Max. The actor.”

The name meant nothing to me.

Apparently, Lily had tried multiple times to get into the restricted area.

Security warned her that if she returned, they would involve police.

She refused to explain herself.

The school filed an incident report.

But because of an administrative mix-up, everyone assumed someone else had contacted me.

The teacher had called because she couldn’t stop thinking about Lily.

When we hung up, I stood beside the sink in shock.

My daughter had disappeared from her group in an unfamiliar city.

She had tried to enter a restricted film set.

And then she had hidden the entire thing from me.

I marched upstairs.

I knocked hard.

“Lily.”

Silence.

“Who is Max?”

The door opened.

Lily stepped out holding her phone.

Her face was pale.

But she looked determined.

Without speaking, she held the screen in front of me.

There was a photograph of a man.

Dark hair.

Green eyes.

A crooked smile.

And for one disorienting second, I felt something twist in my stomach.

He looked like Lily.

Not vaguely.

Enough that I immediately understood what she was thinking.

“Look at us,” she said.

“People can look alike.”

She swiped to another screen.

“He filmed a movie in our county sixteen years ago.”

I stared at her.

“That would’ve been when I was conceived.”

My stomach dropped.

“You think this man is your father?”

“I know he is.”

“Lily, I have never met him.”

She laughed bitterly.

“You expect me to believe this is coincidence?”

She held the phone closer.

Same eyes.

Same smile.

Same slight tilt of the head.

I reached over and straightened a crooked picture frame.

Lily immediately noticed.

“There.”

“What?”

“That’s what you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You clean things whenever I ask about Dad.”

I stopped moving.

“That’s how I know you’re hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding Max.”

“You told me my father abandoned us.”

“He did.”

“No. You hid him because he was famous.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

Her voice broke.

“You let me spend fifteen years thinking my father didn’t want me when maybe he never even knew I existed.”

“Lily—”

“You took my father away from me.”

“No.”

“I’ll never forgive you.”

I tried explaining that resemblance was not proof.

That Max had filmed in our area, but so had many other people.

That I had never met him.

She refused to believe me.

Finally, I told her everything I had avoided for years.

How I called her real father until he changed his number.

How I mailed letters that came back unopened.

How I waited.

How I kept hoping.

How much it had hurt.

“I didn’t tell you because those memories still hurt me,” I admitted. “Not because Max is your father.”

Lily didn’t believe a word.

After that, the distance between us settled into the house.

She stopped coming into the kitchen while I cooked.

She carried dinner upstairs.

Whenever I passed her room, I heard Max’s interviews playing through the door.

Once, I knocked.

“Want to watch one together?”

“No.”

“Maybe it would help if—”

“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?

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.”