I'm Not Your Mother
ARIANA’S POV
‘Five years ago.’
Those words echoed in my skull like a death knell, ringing louder than the wind, louder than the frantic beat of my heart.
My mother stood there barely keeping herself upright, trembling as the weight of whatever she was about to say started to crush her.
She wasn’t crying anymore. The tears had dried on her cheeks, leaving behind raw trails of pain and salt. Her eyes, still wet, locked with mine, and I could feel it before she said another word.
Whatever came next would destroy everything.
She opened her mouth and began to speak.
“Five years ago… I was just a woman,” she said softly, her voice barely louder than the rustle of the leaves around us. “Living in a tiny flat in the east end. Nothing special about me. I worked at a cafe, part-time. I had no husband, no kids, no family. Just... me.”
I blinked, confused.
She wasn’t looking at me now. Her eyes were fixed on something far away—on a memory I couldn’t see. Her arms wrapped around herself like she was cold, though the air wasn’t.
“Then one evening, I got home from work, and this man was standing at my door. A stranger. In a suit too clean for our part of town. I asked him what he wanted, and he handed me a photograph.”
She swallowed hard.
“I looked down at it and… Ariana, the woman in the photo looked exactly like me. Not just a little. Not just a passing resemblance. She could’ve been my twin.”
My blood turned cold.
My stomach clenched as my mind tried to keep up, tried to rationalize the impossible.
“I told him I didn’t have a twin sister. I asked if it was some kind of prank. And do you know what he said to me?” She looked at me again, her voice trembling. “He said, ‘That woman is dead. But your life is about to change if you agree to become her.’”
I stumbled back a step, breath catching in my throat.
No.
No, no, no.
“I laughed at him. I told him to get lost. But he just smiled and said, ‘You already know now. That means you’re a threat. It’s either you become her—or you die.’”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
I couldn’t breathe.
I didn’t want to hear anymore—but I couldn’t stop. I was rooted in place, trapped by the truth unfolding like a nightmare.
“I tried to run. I left town that night. Took a train without knowing where it went. Changed my number. Cut my hair. But he found me again, two days later. I still remember… he smiled like it was a game. He said, ‘You can’t run. You look like her. You are her now.’”
A sob clawed up her throat, but she swallowed it down.
“That’s when I agreed. He told me everything. Who she was. Who you were. He gave me money. Changed my hair. Taught me how to walk like her, how to talk like her. He gave me journals. Recordings. I studied her like… like a role I had to play.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering despite the sweat on my skin.
“You’re lying,” I whispered. “Please tell me you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Why?” I choked. “Why would anyone want you to become her? Why not just say she died? Why hide it?”
She closed her eyes. “Because she wasn’t supposed to die.”
My breath stilled in my chest.
“The man… he was in love with your mother,” she whispered, pain twisting her features. “Deeply. Madly. Obsessively. But she didn’t love him. She never did. She loved your father. And she was loyal to him until the end.”
My hands were trembling now.
“The man was married too. But that didn’t stop him from chasing after her. He thought if he could just get her alone, get her away from the mansion, she’d see him differently. That she’d… change her mind.”
I felt like I was falling, my mind spiraling through memories and photographs.
“He brought her to the cliffs,” she said, her voice hollow. “It was supposed to be just a conversation. That’s what he told me. He said they were arguing, and she slipped. She fell into the sea.”
I stared at her, lips parted.
“He said it was an accident. But I saw it in his eyes when he told me. The way his mouth twitched. The way he avoided the word push. I think… I think he meant to scare her. And maybe—” Her voice broke. “Maybe he didn’t mean to kill her. But he did.”
My knees buckled, and I sat down hard on the cold ground. My fingers dug into the dirt beside me as if it would keep me from floating away.
The world was tilting.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she said desperately, crouching down again to my level. “Ariana, I swear to you, I didn’t want to lie to you. But when I first stepped into the mansion, and you looked up at me with those eyes and said, ‘Mom’—” her voice cracked again. “It broke me.”
I was shaking now. Every part of me trembled like a storm had taken over my bones.
“I’d never been called ‘Mom’ before,” she whispered. “I’d never had anyone look at me like I was their whole world. You… you made me feel like I mattered.”
She reached out to touch me, but I flinched.
“Don’t,” I whispered hoarsely.
Her hand fell back.
“I never stopped loving you,” she said, tears running freely now. “Even if I’m not your mother, not really—I love you like you’re mine.”
I stared at her, heart thundering in my ears.
This couldn’t be real.
It couldn’t be.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no—this has got to be a nightmare.”
I pinched my arm—hard—until I felt pain, until red marks bloomed on my skin.
But she was still there.
Still kneeling.
Still looking at me with eyes full of sorrow and truth.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered again. “I’m so sorry.”
But I couldn’t hear her anymore.
My ears were ringing. My vision blurred.
My world was collapsing.
Every memory I had—every hug, every tear she wiped from my cheeks was unraveling in front of me.
She wasn’t my mother.
She wasn’t my mother.
She wasn’t—
A sob tore from my throat, primal and ugly.
I pressed my hands to my face, shaking, gasping for breath, wishing I could peel back time and return to five minutes ago, when the world still made sense.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
And I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Or who she was.
Or if anything I’d ever believed had been real.
I whispered it again, softer this time, to no one at all.
“This has got to be a nightmare…”
And the wind answered with silence.
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