My adopted daughter spent years trying to erase my biological daughter from our family

Chapter 6: Reading the Record

She cleared her throat and started reading out loud about an email she’d sent us in March about Kloe missing an art show. I never got that email.

Mrs. Kim said she’d sent five more emails after that, each one more worried than the last, asking why we weren’t responding. Every single one had been deleted before we ever saw them.

She explained how she’d started keeping her own records when she realized something was wrong. She’d documented every missed event and every time Kloe showed up to the school looking anxious and exhausted.

The room was so quiet I could hear people breathing. Haley’s face had gone from white to bright red.

She took a step backward toward the door. That’s when guests started pulling out their phones to swipe between the edited versions from the slideshow and the real ones.

A cousin held up her phone to show the person next to her. In Haley’s version, she stood alone in front of the Christmas tree; in the real photo, Kloe sat right beside her holding a stuffed animal.

Someone gasped, and someone else said something under their breath. Haley took another step toward the door.

Chapter 7: Confrontation and Fallout

Ashley stood up so fast her chair fell over backward. She walked right up to Haley with her phone in her hand.

Her voice came out shaky but loud enough for everyone to hear. She said she’d been Haley’s best friend for three years.

Three years of sleepovers and late-night talks. Three years of Haley telling her about being an only child and how her parents had tried for years to have kids but couldn’t.

Ashley’s hand was shaking as she held up a photo of both girls at what looked like Kloe’s thirteenth birthday party. She asked Haley how many other things she’d lied about and if their entire friendship had been fake.

Haley opened her mouth, but nothing came out. My husband moved fast and stepped in front of the door before Haley could reach it.

He told her she needed to stay. His voice didn’t sound like him; it was hard and flat and cold.

He told her she needed to face what she’d done. I couldn’t move; I stood there frozen between my two daughters.

Kloe had her shoulders back and her chin up, standing taller than I’d seen her stand in years. Haley looked trapped, her eyes darting around the room looking for an exit that wasn’t there.

Chapter 8: The Empty Room

The truth was just sitting there on the gift table in a pile of stolen cards and that notebook full of documented cruelty. There was nowhere left for Haley to hide.

People started leaving in small groups, whispering to each other as they headed for the door. My husband moved aside to let them pass but kept his eyes on Haley.

I could see relatives shooting looks at us. They were the kind of looks that said they were judging us for being the kind of parents who didn’t notice their own daughter being erased.

An aunt I barely knew grabbed her purse and left without saying goodbye. One of Haley’s teachers stopped on his way out and said something to her that made her face crumble.

Within ten minutes, the room had cleared except for my sister, Mrs. Kim, and the four of us. My sister and Mrs. Kim started reading through the notebook together, flipping pages slowly.

Haley sank down onto the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest. She wouldn’t look at anyone.

The notebook was thick, and my sister said every single page was filled with Kloe’s handwriting. It contained dates and times and details of every incident.

One entry from March 15th said, “Haley told me mom and dad didn’t want to come to my piano recital.”

Another from May 22nd said, “Haley locked me out of the house during dinner and told everyone I’d already eaten.”

Chapter 9: The Investigation of Pain

Mrs. Kim’s voice broke when she read that one out loud. The entries went back three full years.

Three years of Haley telling Kloe she was going to convince us to send her to boarding school. Three years of my younger daughter documenting her own erasure because she was too scared to tell us.

I made myself walk over to Haley. I sat down on the couch next to her and asked her to explain.

She pulled her knees in tighter. She said, “I didn’t understand.”

I asked her to help me understand and to tell me why she did this. She said, “It wasn’t fair.”

That was all she would say over and over, but she wouldn’t explain what she meant. My husband had moved to the gift table where the cards were spread out.

He picked up a card from his mother from two years ago with fifty dollars inside. He opened another from my aunt with a gift card to Kloe’s favorite bookstore.

He kept opening them one after another, and I could see his hands starting to shake. Each card had money or a personal note from a family member who thought they were staying connected to Kloe.

We’d never known any of these people were trying to reach her. My husband’s face was wet, and tears were running down his cheeks as he read card after card.

Chapter 10: Professional Intervention

Mrs. Kim came over and put her hand on my shoulder. She said we needed professional help.

She said this wasn’t something we could fix on our own with family talks and apologies. She handed me a business card for Melanie Horton, a family therapist specializing in adoption issues.

After Mrs. Kim and my sister finally left, the four of us just sat there surrounded by evidence. I didn’t know where to start or how to begin a conversation about three years of this.

Kloe got up without a word and walked toward the stairs. I heard her bedroom door close and the lock click.

I’d installed that lock myself when she asked for privacy, thinking it was normal teenage stuff. I went to her door and knocked, but she said through the door that she didn’t want to talk right now.

I pressed my forehead against the door, but everything I thought to say sounded stupid and empty. “I’m sorry” felt like nothing compared to three years.

Downstairs, Haley was still on the couch. She said, “Kloe was being dramatic.” She said, “Kloe was making her look bad on purpose.”

She said it like she genuinely thought she was the victim here. My husband’s head snapped up, and he stood up so fast the notebook fell on the floor.

Chapter 11: A House Divided

He started yelling about the lies and the stolen cards and the systematic cruelty. He yelled about how Haley had made her sister invisible and how we’d been too blind to see it.

Haley started crying, but he didn’t stop. He said she needed to understand she’d nearly destroyed her sister, then he walked out and drove away.

I sat there with Haley while she cried. Part of me wanted to comfort her, and another part of me wanted to shake her and demand to know how she could do this.

Eventually, Haley went to her room. I stayed on the couch and picked up the notebook to read from the beginning.

The first entry was from right after Haley started high school. It read like a legal document, like Kloe was building a case because she knew nobody would believe her otherwise.

She’d been right; we hadn’t believed her. We’d dismissed her quietness as teenage moodiness and missed every sign.

My husband came back around midnight, and we stayed up all night going through everything. We found more notebooks in Kloe’s box, including screenshots of Haley’s social media.

We even found a document on Haley’s laptop titled “Only Child Story” with bullet points of lies to keep her story straight. This wasn’t impulsive cruelty; it was planned and sustained.