The Discarded Heiress Returns novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Gift
On her seventeenth birthday Tallulah's mother hands her a negative DNA test in front of two hundred guests, and she drops the family pearls in the cake and walks out, only to find the real daughter waiting at the motel with a packed suitcase who says she knew three weeks ago.
For my seventeenth birthday, my mother handed me an envelope in front of two hundred people.
"Open it here, darling," she said. "Everyone's been dying to see."
The ballroom of our house on Monterey Square was full of white roses.
The cake was four tiers tall, with a gold one and a gold seven burning on top.
I thought it was a car key.
She'd been hinting about a car for a month.
I tore the flap and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
It was a lab report.
Two names were typed at the top. Augusta Ballantyne. Tallulah Ballantyne.
Halfway down, in bold:
Negative.
I looked at the line.
Then I looked up at my mother.
She was already holding the microphone the bandleader had passed her.
"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," she said, and her voice caught in exactly the right place. "You're not our daughter."
The string quartet stopped in the middle of a bar.
Somebody near the champagne tower laughed, then stopped.
"There was a storm the night you were born," Mother told the room. "The hospital lost power. Two baby girls were put in the wrong cribs."
She pressed a hand to her chest.
"I only found out on Tuesday. Our real daughter comes home tomorrow."
A woman in the front row put her phone up to film.
Nobody told her to put it down.
I looked for my father.
He was standing by the piano in his navy three-piece suit.
He was looking at his shoes.
"Daddy?"
Edmund Ballantyne took his glasses off and cleaned them on his pocket square.
He didn't say a word.
Over the rail of the ballroom stairs, I saw two of our maids carrying a box down from the third floor.
My blue lamp was sticking out of the top.
"You already packed my room," I said.
"We thought it would be easier," Mother said. "For you."
Our family lawyer stepped out of the crowd in his gray suit.
He held out a second envelope and a silver pen.
"Miss, this is a check for fifty thousand dollars," he said quietly. "You'll sign that you won't use the Ballantyne name or speak to the press. Then the car takes you to your family."
"My family."
"The Bledsoes. Dale Bledsoe. They run a motel out on Tybee."
Two hundred people were waiting to see what I'd do.
I knew most of them.
I had curtsied to them at cotillion and poured their tea at Christmas.
I had memorized their names because Mother said a Ballantyne never forgets a name.
I took the pen.
The lawyer blinked.
I handed the pen back to him.
Then I walked to my mother and took the microphone out of her hand.
It squealed.
"Thank you all for coming," I said.
My voice shook, so I said the next part slower.
"My mother wants you to know she's heartbroken. She found out on Tuesday. She's had my room packed since this morning."
A few people looked at the maids on the stairs.
Mother's smile didn't move.
"Tallulah," she said, very softly. "Give me that."
I didn't.
I reached up and unhooked the pearls from my neck.
They were my grandmother's. Daddy's mother's. I got them at sixteen, in this room.
"These are Ballantyne," I said.
I dropped them into the top tier of the cake.
They sank into the white frosting between the candles.
Someone gasped.
"So is the name," I said. "Keep both."
I tore the lawyer's envelope in half without opening it and set the pieces on the cake table.
Then I took my phone out of my clutch.
"It's on the family plan," I said. "I'm guessing that's yours too."
I laid it next to the torn check.
"How long have you known, Mother?"
"Tuesday," she said. "I told you."
"Edmund," I said, and my father finally looked up at his own name. "Is that true?"
His mouth opened.
Mother turned her head an inch toward him.
He closed it again.
"Then I'll take the car," I said.
I put the microphone down on the cake table and walked out through the middle of the ballroom.
People stepped back to let me pass.
My heels were loud on the floor.
Nobody followed me.
At the front steps, the maids had set out two suitcases and one box with my blue lamp in it.
The driver held the back door open.
He'd been driving me to school since I was five.
"Happy birthday, Miss Tallulah," he said, and his eyes were wet.
"Don't," I said. "I'll cry in your car."
"Cry all you want. It's not my car."
That was the first time I laughed all night.
We drove east out of Savannah with the windows down.
The marsh smelled like salt and mud.
I was still in my white silk blouse and the skirt Mother picked.
I still had frosting on my fingers.
Twenty minutes later the road ran out of streetlights and into the island.
The driver slowed in front of a long, low motel shaped like an L.
A neon lantern buzzed over the office.
Half the letters were dark. It said THE LAN ER MO EL.
Every window was black except one.
Someone was sitting on the office steps under the porch light.
A girl my age, in a Tybee Island High hoodie, with a packed suitcase at her feet.
She stood up when the headlights hit her.
She had strawberry-blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
She had my mother's face.
I got out of the car and stood in the gravel.
"You're her," I said. "The real one."
"I'm Dorrie," she said.
She wiped her hands on her jeans.
"I'm sorry about tonight. She said she'd do it quietly."
"She said she found out on Tuesday."
Dorrie looked at me for a long second.
"She told me three weeks ago."
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