All Chapters of A Belated Sunny Day: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

At the dinner table, Mom picked up the last piece of spare rib and put it in Claire Blackwood’s bowl.The fork I had reached out stopped midair. After a pause, I carefully took some greens instead.“Mom, I want to sign up for a math competition prep class.”Without even looking up, Mom said, “Claire’s grades dropped on her recent exam. Help her catch up with her studies this weekend.”“But I need to study too,” I said.“Your grades are good. What’s the big deal about helping her?” She put down her cutlery and looked at me. “Sophia Blackwood, I didn’t raise you all these years to have you refuse something this simple.”Claire gnawed on her spare rib and mumbled, “Mom, I want to enter the public speaking competition. The city-level one.”“Go ahead.” Mom agreed immediately. “How much is the registration fee?”“Six hundred.”“I’ll transfer the money to you tomorrow.”Last month, my homeroom teacher had recommended me for the state-level mathematics competition. The registration f

The next morning, Mom brought two bowls of ravioli in brodo to the table.Claire’s ravioli was garnished with fragrant herbs, with a faintly milky broth made from bone stock.Mine was nothing but clear broth, and some of the ravioli were still undercooked.“Mom, why are Claire’s and Sophia’s ravioli different?” Claire stirred the ravioli in her bowl with her spoon, asking as though she didn’t already know the answer.“You’re still growing. You need more nourishment. Bone broth gives you calcium.” Mom pushed a small dish of grated parmesan toward her. “Eat more.”“But isn’t Sophia still growing too?”Mom glanced at me.There was something unreadable in her eyes, but her expression was cold.“She doesn’t need it.”I lowered my head and ate my ravioli. The half-cooked wrappers were tough as I chewed.The bitterness in my heart was about to spill from my throat.“Mom, I need to go to the mall this afternoon to buy a dress for my public speaking competition,” Claire said. “Will y

My fingers trembled slightly.Eighteen years.One blind eye. The scar on my forehead. The humiliation of being locked out in the cold rain all night. There were also countless iterations of “You’re not my biological daughter.”“You don’t deserve it.”“An adopted child is an adopted child, after all.”I crouched on the floor, biting my lip as tears poured down my face.So I was her biological daughter after all.It was just one piece of paper that had been wrong.The parentage test from eighteen years ago had been wrong, and because of that mistake, I had spent eighteen years living with rejection and humiliation.I stood up, folded the report carefully, and slipped it into the inner pocket of my clothes.I walked down the street in a daze. I thought about so many things.What expression would Mom have when she saw the report? Would she cry? Would she hug me? Would she apologize? Would she pull me into her arms and finally feel sorry for what had happened to my right eye? Wou

I pressed my phone against my chest and lay back on the bed.There was a water stain on the ceiling shaped like a pair of outstretched wings.Then my phone started ringing nonstop.My homeroom teacher. The guidance counselor. The principal. A reporter from the state TV station.Top 1% in the state; this was the highest score in the school's history.That afternoon, someone called my name from downstairs.Mom had come, followed by reporters, cameras, and neighbors holding up their phones.She pushed open the door and walked in. The moment she saw me, her eyes turned red. She grabbed my hand so tightly that it hurt.“This is my daughter! She’s been hardworking since she was little. I raised her and taught her everything myself…”She faced the cameras, her voice thick with emotion. Her performance was flawless.Behind her, a neighbor whispered, “Isn’t that the Blackwoods’ adopted daughter? They treated her so badly before. Now that she got into a good university, she's suddenly

I turned around and pulled the door open.A crowd had gathered outside.The woman from next door was craning her neck to see inside. She had watched me grow up, from a little girl to the eighteen-year-old I was now.She saw Mom slumped on the floor and the two DNA test reports scattered across the ground. She saw the scar on my forehead and the lifeless darkness in my right eye.She gasped, holding a hand to her mouth in disbelief.“Oh, my… So the Blackwoods treated their adopted daughter terribly all these years, and now that they’ve found out she’s actually their biological daughter, they’ve come running to claim her?”“That’s right.” Another neighbor chimed in, “Who around here hasn’t seen how they treated that poor girl? Making her wash clothes outside in the middle of winter until her hands were red and swollen from the cold.“And everyone knows how she lost the sight in that right eye. They called it an accident, but really, who would call that an accident?”“Now that t