Penny stared at the picture dumbfounded, trying to process what she saw. She was confident that she had seen this woman before, so did that mean she was still around when she was little if this was her sister? She had so many questions that it was all starting to hurt her brain.

She placed the picture down and began to look through the dozens of other pictures in the box. Most of them were taken when Andrea was a young child and included images of her horseback riding, participating in dance recitals, and engaging in various other activities, with either one or both of her parents included. There were a few of her Grandma Rosemary holding her. Soon, she stumbled across a newborn photo, looked at the back, and saw writing in her mother's handwriting.

Andrea Lee Puckett

July 1st, 1987, 1:30 am

7lbs, 9ozs

She felt a knot in her stomach, feeling jealous that her parents had baby pictures of Andrea while she had none. The youngest picture she came across was when she was only 3. Her parents claimed that her baby pictures were destroyed in a fire, but it was obvious that they had taken great care to preserve Andrea's.

Penny needed to confront her parents about why they pretended that Andrea never existed. She understood that everyone grieves differently, but it seemed disturbing that they would act as if Andrea had never been part of their lives.

Quickly, she got up and put all but the first picture she found back in the box. While she knew Kim would be unavailable, Asia would hopefully be free to talk as she was only babysitting at her house today. She desperately needed someone to talk to before confronting her parents about this.

Penny sat on her bed, crossed legs as she finished explaining everything that had happened during the day to Asia over the phone.

"Damn, and they told you all this time that they never wanted kids, and you were a surprise child."

She just nodded. "Yeah, Andrea was born two years after their wedding, so I don't know what to make of that. The picture I found looks like a High School one, but she looks pretty young; I don't think I was born yet."

The more Penny stared at that photo, the more she saw a lot of her mom in Andrea. People always joked about her being adopted because there wasn't any resemblance between her parents, but her dad reassured her, saying that Penny took after her grandma.

"No offense, but something is seriously messed up there with your parents. You just told me they have all those pictures of her as a baby, but all of yours were destroyed in a fire. That is sus all the way, and let's not even start with deflecting the last name thing."

She couldn't help but cringe; Asia was making it sound like her parents were some sort of criminals.

"I know it looks bad, but there must be some explanation."

"What kind of reasonable explanation can make having one child's baby pictures still around after a fire but not the others."

Penny just stayed quiet, trying to think of some reasonable explanation, but couldn't come up with one.

"I do not know, but when they get home, I'm going just to be upfront and ask them about it. I know I had to have met her before she was in that dream I mentioned."

She heard Asia screaming at one of her sisters through the receiver. Thankfully, it was on speaker because it would have hurt her ears if it wasn't.

"Sorry about that, freaking Aaliyah again with her smart mouth. I swear I wasn't that much of a smart ass at 12 years old."

Penny chuckled. "Oh, I don't know about that; I can name a few times when we were that age."

"Anyway, explain to me that dream again because for Andrea to show up in a dream about some kid seems so random."

"The girl in my dream is called Claire; she is at the mall with her parents and siblings. Let me tell you, the one thing that sticks out in those dreams is what a bitch that mother is to that little girl. She doesn't treat the other ones like she did her and called that poor girl a pest."

Asia let out a gasp. "Ouch, it seems like one dysfunctional family right there. Seems like that kid was some scapegoat for that mother,"

"Exactly, and she wanted to see Santa so badly that she ran off on her own. Poor thing tripped and fell, and Andrea appeared with a hand approaching her."

"I don't know, Penny, but that seems really specific, more so than the average dream, and you said you found a dress exactly like the one in your attic that she was wearing?"

She could see why Asia was apprehensive about it, but considering all the other circumstances, she honestly didn't think it was a big deal.

"I don't know; it's just a dream; they don't have much significance anyway."

"Penny dreams like that, especially if some pieces are lining up in real life; I think your brain is trying to tell you something."

Penny hated to admit it, but she knew Asia had a point. Something about this whole situation wasn't right; too many pieces weren't lining up like they should be.

"Look at that, all those psychology classes paying off," Penny joked, trying to get off the seriousness of everything.

"Telling you you're going to enjoy it when you take it, it's fascinating stuff. I can't wait for college and take more of those classes; I can't be a Forensic investigator without taking multiple classes like that."

"What even made you decide on that career path anyway."

"Something about watching all those true crime shows brought a passion in me about wanting to get involved and help solve cases. Can you imagine how many families I could help by doing that?

She acknowledged that while Asia was very imaginative, she could see how that creativity could be helpful in that area. Although she couldn't envision herself in that role, she was sensitive to such content. Whenever she attempted to watch a true crime show, she had to switch it off before it showed the body.

Penny looked at the time on her alarm clock and saw it was after 5, which meant her parents would be home soon.

"I'm going to let you go; my parents should be home soon."

"Let Kim and me know exactly what they tell you, okay? I'm invested in this; it's almost like a work of bad fiction or something, but you still want to know."

"Thanks, Asia, will do."

After hanging up, she decided to wait for her parents downstairs. She was afraid of what could change, but she was too deep in to back out now, and there were answers that she needed to know.

When her parents finally arrived home, it was quarter to six, and they were surprised to see her sitting on the sofa waiting.

"Oh, Penny, I'm glad you are down here. There's something your dad and I want to talk to you about," her mother said as she took off her coat and hung it up.

"There's something I want to discuss with you as well," Penny said, getting up from the sofa. Her hands trembled as she showed them the picture of Andrea.

The look of shock and sorrow on their faces as they took the picture would never leave her mind.

Her dad looked at her with some anger. "Where on earth did you get this?"

"I was trying to find something up in the attic for my history project, and I found this in a box labeled Andrea Puckett."

"John, I think it's time we told her the truth. She's old enough to handle it," her mom said, looking melancholy, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Though he didn't seem to agree with her, he sighed and sat in his chair as her mom sat next to her on the sofa.

It was eerily silent, and no one knew how to even begin, but thankfully, her mom started the conversation that no one really wanted to be having.

"I know this must be confusing for you, and you have many questions for us."

Penny sighed. "I do when I was over at Asia's the other day working on my project. I was using Ancestry.com, and neither of you came up on the search. So, when I looked up Grandma Rosemary's name, I found your wedding registry."

She then looked over to her dad. "It said dad's name was Edward John Puckett; I didn't believe it at first, but I saw Grandma's name as a witness, and then I found a public record that listed you guys having a daughter named Andrea."

Again, the room fell into silence before her dad spoke up.

"I guess the beginning was as good as any," he said, sitting further into his chair and looking very uncomfortable as he looked at her mom.

"You see, Penny, Puckett was originally your dad's last name, and we were married under that name for well over 20 years. We knew we wanted to have a child a year into our marriage, so we started trying for one."

Penny had to bite her tongue. She wanted to say something about the lie they told her about not wanting kids, but she just needed to listen right now.

"So, about two years after our marriage, we had a beautiful baby girl we named Andrea Lee."

Her dad just sighed as he started to sit up. "We named her after my grandmother Andrea, who was born in France but came to the United States as an infant, and then Lee was your Grandpa Jimmy's middle name."

"So, Andrea is my sister then, right?" Penny asked, looking at the photograph.

"Not quite."

(Trigger Warning for Drug use mentioned/Cartels)

Penny whipped her head back up so fast to look at her mother. "What do you mean by that?"

She saw her mom look up to the ceiling, tears forming in her eyes, struggling with the words she wanted to say, so her dad intervened on her behalf.

"You see, Penny, by the time Andrea got older, your mom and I started picking up more work hours. Your mom, at the time, was a full-time nurse practitioner while I was making my way up in a law firm. By the time she got into High School, we didn't nearly spend as much time as we should've with her; it was around that time she started getting involved with the wrong types of people who introduced her to drugs."

"Drugs?" she repeated.

Her dad just nodded. "The hardcore kind, too, and by the time we realized what was going on, she was too far gone in her addiction. We tried Therapy and rehab, to no real effect. She started stealing not just from us but from others to keep up with her addiction. We probably enabled too much by bailing her out every time she was arrested."

She looked back down at the picture, and it was only now that she noticed how sickly-looking she looked.

"What happened to her?"

"She dropped out of High School when she was 16 and ran off with a group of other drug dealers and joined a cartel."

Her eyes went wide open.

"A cartel, oh my god, that is so dangerous, but what does any of that have to do with changing your last names and with me? Did you guys have me just to replace her because of how she turned out.?"

"Oh god no, Penny, it's not like that at all," her mother said quickly, but she couldn't believe her.

"Four years after she ran away, she suddenly returned to our lives a day or two before Christmas, with the most beautiful little three-year-old in a pretty red Christmas dress."

Suddenly, it all snapped in her mind, where her mother was leading into this.

"Are you saying that Andrea Puckett is my mother?" she asked, not entirely sure if she understood any of this.

This time, her dad got up from his chair and sat next to her on the sofa. He tried taking her hand, but Penny just recoiled from him.

He sighed but continued where her mother had left off.

"She came to us with her boyfriend at the time and told us how she had you in the backseat of a car and named you after my mother, Penelope. Andrea told us she was raising you in New York City all that time, but she had planned on moving to Mexico before long, and we knew exactly what that meant."

Penny was unaware of her tears until she covered her face and felt them. Her mom took her hand, and she saw the devastation on her mom's face, similar to how hers must have looked at that moment.

"I know it is hard, and you have every right to be mad at us for keeping this from you, but you need to understand we did this to protect you. Andrea was part of a dangerous cartel, where they sell children for drugs. As hard as it was to accept, we realized Andrea was too far gone, so we paid her so we could keep you and raise you away from all that. So, we changed our last name from Puckett to Simmons, and your dad changed his first name from Edward to John so the Cartel could not find us."

She felt deflated after hearing all of that; she'd been living a lie this whole time. Her parents are her grandparents, and her biological parents are drug dealers.

"I-I really don't know how to feel."

Her mom just squeezed her hand. "It's okay; why don't you go upstairs and take time to process this? When you want to talk about it, we'll be here."

Penny quickly accepted the suggestion and grabbed Andrea's picture as she walked away and ran up the stairs. She needs some space from her parents for a while.

She didn't know how long she just lay there staring at the picture of her biological mother; it was hard to know what to make of it right now. She has only had one mother and one father all her life, and now being told she has another set out there was mind-shattering.

To her, Nicole and John Simmons would always be her real parents no matter what, but right now, she just didn't know what she could believe from them. What else could they have lied to her about if they lied to her all these years?

Then there's that dream with that girl, Claire, and Andrea, which is starting to bother her more now that her parents have told her about her so-called birth mother. Could it be some sort of repressed memories her brain is trying to get through to her?

Now, I am really curious to know what this DNA test will tell me, and it's probably the one thing that can't lie to me right now.

Author's Note

Here's our next chapter. We finally learned "The Truth" from Penny's parents about who Andrea is and how Penny came to them. Now, Penny is questioning every little thing she's ever been told by them. So i have an actress picked out for Andrea, so you get an idea of how she looks like in the picture, I imagine she would be portrayed by Lili Reinhart, if you don't know who that is, i have added her to the list of cast.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe them, or do you think they fabricated a story? If you believe them, do you think they were incredibly naïve just to assume that the child that Andrea brought with her was hers, or they wouldn't think of any other option at that time and take her word for it?