I should have been furious. I should have screamed until my throat bled. Instead, I laughed. A quiet, bitter sound, like something cracking loose inside my chest.
They hadn’t just forgotten me. They had rewritten me. And now, they wanted the law to finish the job.
I walked into the courthouse on the first day of trial with nothing but my coat and my silence. I didn’t bring a binder of evidence. I didn’t bring a lawyer. I thought I didn’t need to prove I existed. But as I watched my parents’ attorney lay out a timeline of my life that erased every sacrifice I had ever made, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. They weren’t just trying to win a lawsuit. They were trying to annihilate my history.
The courtroom smelled of lemon polish and old lies.
Charles wore the same charcoal suit he wore to church every Sunday. Loretta had on her navy dress with the silver buttons, the one she bought for Mason’s graduation. They looked immaculate. Believable. Concerned parents dealing with a troubled, lying child.
Their lawyer, Mr. Sterling, wasted no time tearing me apart.
“Miss Kincaid is unstable,” he argued, gesturing to me as if I were a volatile chemical. “She has fabricated military records using stolen credentials. We found a discrepancy in the Department of Defense public listings. There is no ‘Alyssa R. Kincaid’ listed in the general enlistment database for that year.”
He was right. Technically.
Because on paper, I didn’t exist.
