My Name Was Banned, But My Success Was Unstoppable novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Gray Eyes

Nobody in the ballroom moved.

Lydia stood at the microphone with her gown spread around her and her eyes on my father.

"He won't," she said to the room.

"So I will."

She took a folded paper out of the bodice of her dress.

It was creased from being carried a long time.

"Five years ago I took one of those ten-dollar DNA kits as a joke," she said.

"I wanted to see if I had any family left. My parents died when I was nine, and the Thaxtons took me in as a favor to my father's old friend."

My mother had stopped clawing at the clasp.

She sat very still.

"The kit told me I had a close match in the database," Lydia said.

"A man called Thaddeus Thaxton."

A sound went through the crowd.

"I thought it was a mistake," Lydia said.

"So I took the test to a lab. I took Thaddeus's cup of coffee, and my mother's wine glass. I had them tested, too."

She looked at my mother.

"You're my mother, Ingrid," she said.

"I'm your daughter. I was born at St. Anne's Hospital on the fourth of March. So was Kerensa, the same night. There was a nurse that week who got two bracelets wrong."

I couldn't feel my hands.

"The Stuyvesants took home the Thaxton baby," Lydia said.

"The Thaxtons took home theirs, which wasn't."

She looked at me for the first time since the clip had started.

"Look at us," she said.

"Look at the whole family."

Every Thaxton in that room had my father's pale gray eyes.

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