On the seventh day after my mother passed away, I went home to attend the reading of her will.
I thought it was just an ordinary property distribution, until my stepfather Zhou Jianye took out a paternity test in front of a room full of relatives and said that I was not my mother Chen Wanqing's biological daughter.
My sister, Zhou Yuwei, cried and persuaded me: "Sister, you have occupied my mother's love for twenty-eight years, so please stop taking over the house." My uncle stood at the door and told me not to make things too ugly. Everyone was waiting for me to sign the declaration of relinquishment, as if a trial had been rehearsed.
They don't know that I haven't turned off the recording on my phone since I entered the house.
That night, I was kicked out of the house dragging my luggage, but I received a courier from my mother before she was alive. There were only three things in the courier: a bank safe key, an old photo from the day I was born, and a voice recorder.
In the recording, the mother's voice was weak but clear: "Wantang, if they say you are not my daughter, don't believe a word."
From that moment on, I stopped begging them to recognize me as family.
They used a fake appraisal to force me out, so I investigated the real person who sent the appraisal; they forged a power of attorney to sell the house, so I produced evidence at the signing site; they said I was greedy for money and unfilial, so I spread out the audio recordings, appraisals, notarization videos, bank statements and old diaries left by my mother one by one.
Later I found out that the person whose identity had been changed was not me. The person who really hid the secret for more than 20 years was the one who called me sister in tears.
And what my mother left me was never just a house.
What she left to me is the confidence to still stand upright in the face of all betrayals.
