But she looked determined.

Without speaking, she held the screen in front of me.

There was a photograph of a man.

Dark hair.

Green eyes.

A crooked smile.

And for one disorienting second, I felt something twist in my stomach.

He looked like Lily.

Not vaguely.

Enough that I immediately understood what she was thinking.

“Look at us,” she said.

“People can look alike.”

She swiped to another screen.

“He filmed a movie in our county sixteen years ago.”

I stared at her.

“That would’ve been when I was conceived.”

My stomach dropped.

“You think this man is your father?”

“I know he is.”

“Lily, I have never met him.”

She laughed bitterly.

“You expect me to believe this is coincidence?”

She held the phone closer.

Same eyes.

Same smile.

Same slight tilt of the head.

I reached over and straightened a crooked picture frame.

Lily immediately noticed.

“There.”

“What?”

“That’s what you do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You clean things whenever I ask about Dad.”

I stopped moving.

“That’s how I know you’re hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding Max.”

“You told me my father abandoned us.”

“He did.”

“No. You hid him because he was famous.”

“That isn’t what happened.”

Her voice broke.

“You let me spend fifteen years thinking my father didn’t want me when maybe he never even knew I existed.”

“Lily—”

“You took my father away from me.”

“No.”

“I’ll never forgive you.”

I tried explaining that resemblance was not proof.

That Max had filmed in our area, but so had many other people.

That I had never met him.

She refused to believe me.

Finally, I told her everything I had avoided for years.

How I called her real father until he changed his number.

How I mailed letters that came back unopened.

How I waited.

How I kept hoping.

How much it had hurt.

“I didn’t tell you because those memories still hurt me,” I admitted. “Not because Max is your father.”

Lily didn’t believe a word.

After that, the distance between us settled into the house.

She stopped coming into the kitchen while I cooked.

She carried dinner upstairs.

Whenever I passed her room, I heard Max’s interviews playing through the door.

Once, I knocked.

“Want to watch one together?”

“No.”

“Maybe it would help if—”

“You’ll just sit there telling me what isn’t true.”

That hurt more than the yelling.

At night, I would check the locks and pause outside her bedroom.

She was only a few feet away.

But Los Angeles felt like it was still between us.

And then something happened that frightened me even more.

Against my better judgment, I started studying Max too.

I knew he couldn’t be Lily’s father.

I knew that.

But the resemblance was unsettling.

Lily even had some of his expressions.

Her biological father had rarely spoken about his relatives.

Could Max somehow be related to him?

A distant cousin?

An uncle?

Something?

I didn’t know.

But I refused to tell Lily any of that without evidence.

Then one evening, I walked into her room and saw a payment page open on her phone.

She quickly pulled it against her chest.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

I took the phone.

She was about to send three hundred dollars.

Almost everything she had saved.

“To who?”

She looked away.

Someone online had contacted her after she left comments under Max’s photos.

The person claimed to work for him.

He said Max remembered me.

He said Max suspected Lily might be his daughter.

And if she wanted a private DNA test, she first had to pay a confidentiality fee.

My blood went cold.

“Lily, this is a scam.”

“You don’t know that.”

“The account was created four days ago.”

Silence.

“His name is spelled wrong.”

She looked down.

“And he told you not to tell an adult.”

Her face crumpled.

I canceled the payment.

For one second, I thought that would finally end the fantasy.

Then she whispered,

“That doesn’t mean the real Max isn’t my father.”

That was the moment I became truly afraid.

Someone had almost taken her savings.

The next person might ask her to meet somewhere.

That night, I found Max’s official agency website.

I stared at the contact email for almost an hour.

Then I wrote.

My name is Anna, and I desperately need your help with my fifteen-year-old daughter.

I explained everything.

That I was a single mother.

That I had saved for months for Lily’s class trip.

That she had seen Max and become convinced he was her father.

That she had left her school group trying to reach him.

That studio security had intervened.

That she no longer believed anything I said.

And that someone had already tried to scam her.

I wrote:

I am not asking for money, publicity, or even a DNA test. I only need Max to confirm that we have never met.

I read the message six times.

Then I sent it.

The next afternoon, Max’s agent, Angela, replied.

She was polite.

But cautious.

She explained that celebrities regularly received false claims involving paternity, money, and attention.

Before she could approach Max, she needed to verify me.

I sent identification with unnecessary information covered.

I sent the school incident report.

With my permission, she contacted the principal.

I also confirmed in writing that I had never contacted the press and had no intention of doing so.

Two days later, Angela wrote again.

She told me she was a mother too.

She understood how desperately teenagers sometimes cling to an explanation they emotionally need.

Then she said she would see what she could do.

I read those words over and over.

Then a week passed.

Then two.

By the end of the month, I had heard nothing more.

Lily’s anger slowly faded.

What replaced it was worse.

Silence.

She moved around the house like a guest.

Every morning, I checked my email before getting out of bed.