Rejected by Foster Family

The bus ride to the Chen house dragged on forever. Forty-five minutes isn’t that long, but every one felt like an hour. I sat by the grimy window and watched the city shift, clean streets and perfect lawns fading into older blocks with cracked sidewalks and beat-up cars. The kind of neighborhood I’d come from. If you could even call it growing up.

When the bus turned onto Maple Street and the house came into view, my stomach knotted. It looked the same. A plain two-story with paint peeling in strips and that chain-link fence they’d put up “just for now” fifteen years ago. The lawn was patchy, the mailbox leaning like it was tired. Everything about it still whispered barely getting by.

I’d lived there for twenty-three years before Mateo. Twenty-three years that started out okay and ended… I still don’t know how to explain it.

Dragging my suitcase up the cracked sidewalk, memories hit like a flood. Me as a baby in Clara’s arms in the few photos they had, she was actually smiling. Robert’s hand on her shoulder, proud. They’d been trying for a kid eight years, then suddenly I was there, this baby with promises attached that never made sense to me.

For the first four years I was their miracle. Their princess. The kid they’d prayed for. Then Clara got pregnant.

Everything flipped the day Lily was born.

Suddenly I wasn’t a miracle anymore. I was just a reminder they’d settled for someone else’s child. Clara stopped looking at me the way she used to. Robert started working late. And Lily… Lily grew up knowing I was less than her.

By eighteen I was holding down two jobs. Bartending at night at a dive where the owner didn’t care I was underage and looked away when men twice my age tried their luck. Cleaning motel rooms in the daytime, scrubbing toilets and changing sheets stained with things I tried not to picture.

Most nights I still went to bed hungry. Clara cooked for Robert and Lily, and I’d get scraps, if there were any. Usually just ramen in my little room, telling myself it was fine, temporary.

Then Mateo happened.

I was twenty-two when Clara and Robert first brought him up. “A wonderful opportunity,” they said. “A good match.” They were practically buzzing, and I was stupid enough to think it was because they were happy for me.

Looking back, I should’ve known. Should’ve wondered why they were pushing so hard. Why someone like Mateo, rich, successful, out of my league, would even agree to marry me.

But I was desperate. Desperate to leave that house. Desperate to start fresh. Desperate to believe I deserved something good.

“How bad could living with a stranger be?” I’d told myself the night before the wedding. Naive.

Mateo had seemed nice at first. Polite. Respectful even. He smiled at the wedding, said his vows without blinking. I let myself hope.

That hope lasted exactly one night.

Our wedding night was awkward, quick. After that he pulled away, physically, emotionally. I spent the next three years trying to figure out why, trying to be perfect, trying to make him want me.

I managed the house, his staff, his schedule. I learned his moods. I tried to be supportive, to be useful.

He repaid me by screwing everyone but me.

The first time I caught him, we’d been married six months. I went to his office to tell him dinner was ready and found him with his secretary, a sleek brunette named Amanda who’d smiled so sweetly at me at our wedding.

She was on top of him in his chair, skirt around her waist, riding him like her life depended on it.

I stood there for thirty seconds, frozen, then quietly backed out. They didn’t even notice. That night I cried myself to sleep while he “worked late.”

After that the signs were everywhere. Lipstick on his collars. Perfume that wasn’t mine. The looks the maids gave me—pity or contempt. The noises from different rooms when he thought I was asleep.

And I said nothing. Did nothing. Just swallowed it. Because what choice did I have?

Now, standing on Clara and Robert’s doorstep with my sad little suitcase, I realized I’d never had a choice at all. Just one prison after another, believing the next would be better.

I raised my hand and knocked.

The door opened almost right away. Clara’s face appeared. For a second she looked surprised. Then it twisted into something ugly.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Not hello. Not are you okay. Just disgust.

“I…” My voice came out smaller than I wanted. “I need a place to stay. Just for a few days while I figure things out.”

“Figure things out?” Clara’s laugh was sharp. “What’s there to figure out? You couldn’t keep your husband, and now you’re crawling back here?”

Robert showed up behind her, already frowning. “Couldn’t keep your man satisfied?”

It felt like a punch. No concern. No sympathy. Just judgment.

Clara glanced at the neighbor’s yard, Mrs. Patterson was out watering her plants but obviously eavesdropping. “Get inside,” she hissed, yanking me in. “I’m not having the whole neighborhood see this.”

I stumbled inside, my suitcase catching on the doorframe. The house smelled the same, cheap air freshener and disappointment.

“Mom?” Lily’s voice floated from the living room. “Who is it?”

She came around the corner, twenty-one now and looking nothing like me. She’d gotten Clara’s looks, mousy brown hair, average everything. Pretty enough, but unremarkable. What she lacked in looks she made up for in cruelty.

Her eyes landed on me and her mouth curved. “Oh my God. You’re pathetic.”

“Lily,”

“No, seriously.” She walked closer, raking me up and down. “Did he finally realize how useless you are? How worthless?”

“That’s enough,” I said quietly. My voice shook.

“Is it?” She folded her arms. “You’ve been gone three years, living in your mansion with your rich husband, and now you’re back here with your tail between your legs. What happened? Did he get tired of your fat ass?”

“I said that’s enough!” It came out louder than I meant, sharp and raw.

Clara stepped between us. “Don’t you raise your voice in my house.”

My house. Not our house. Never.

“I just need a few days,” I tried again, keeping the desperation out of my voice. “Please. I’m looking for jobs. I’ll be out of your way, I just,”

“Two days,” Robert cut in. “You have two days. Then your fat ass is out of here.”

The word hit me like a slap. Fat. The same one Mateo had used.

Clara nodded. “And you’re not staying in the guest room. That’s Lily’s craft room now. You can have the storage room.”

The storage room. A glorified closet full of boxes and old decorations. They’d stuck me there before, my last year here, when Lily decided she needed my room for “meditation.”

“Fine,” I whispered. What else could I say?

“And don’t think you’ll be eating our food,” Clara added. “You’re an adult. You can figure it out.”

“Jesus, Mom, just let her starve,” Lily said with a laugh. “She could stand to lose a few pounds anyway.”

I wanted to scream. Tell them all to go to hell. Say I was worth something, that they were the small, mean, pathetic ones. But I didn’t. I just picked up my suitcase and walked to the back.

The storage room was even smaller than I remembered. Six by six, maybe. A single window looking out at the neighbor’s fence. Boxes stacked to the ceiling. A thin mat thrown on the floor.

This was where I’d sleep. On the floor. Like a dog.

I dropped my suitcase, sat on the mat, pulled my knees to my chest.

The house creaked around me. I could hear Lily’s voice in the living room, Clara’s too, both of them laughing. Probably about me.

By evening the house went quiet. I lay on the mat staring at the ceiling, phone in my hand, scrolling job listings. Motel clerk. Waitress. Retail. Anything with housing or enough pay to get me out.

Every application got ignored or rejected within hours. No experience. Position filled. We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates. Each one like another stab.

Around midnight I heard voices. Clara and Robert in their room next door. The walls were thin.

“She’s bad luck,” Clara whispered. “Always has been.”

“I know,” Robert said. “But what were we supposed to do? Throw her out on the street?”

“We should have. The payments stopped years ago anyway. She’s worthless now.”

I froze. Payments?

“Do you think she knows?” Robert asked.

“About the money? No. She’s too stupid to figure it out.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”

My heart was pounding. Someone had paid them to take me? Who? Why did it stop?

Questions swarmed. Was it my real parents? Were they alive? Had they just stopped caring? Or was it something worse?

I grabbed my phone and started searching. Adoption records. Foster databases. Missing children reports. Anything.

Nothing. No record of me before I showed up at Clara and Robert’s as a baby. No adoption papers. No birth certificate that made sense.

It was like I’d just appeared out of nowhere.

I searched until my eyes burned and my phone was at fifteen percent. The sun started creeping through the window.

I was no closer to answers. But one thing was clear: Clara and Robert had been paid. And when the money stopped, so did the act.

I’d been a transaction. A paycheck.

It should’ve broken me. Instead it made me angry.

I’d spent my whole life thinking I owed them. That I should be grateful. That they’d taken me in out of kindness.

They hadn’t. They’d done it for money. And when it ran out, they sold me off to Mateo.

Another transaction.

I sat up, my body aching from the mat, and looked at the tiny room. This was it. This was all I had.

Two days to figure out my life. Two days to find a job, a place, a reason to keep going.

I had to chase this lead now, because the alternative, crawling back to Mateo or staying here, was worse than anything else.

I pulled out my phone again and kept searching.