Chapter 119

"I always wondered why my parents hated me so much. It wouldn't have stung so badly if they were awful to everyone, but no; Franklin doted on Preston, his brother's kid. Caroline smothered Catherine, and after Catherine left, she started lavishing all her affection on Serenna—her niece. Not me." I smiled bitterly. "For a while in middle school, I actually wondered if I wasn't their child. Maybe I was adopted, like in those old telly dramas." Ashton nodded silently. "But Jace told me something that finally made it all make sense. I wasn't the swapped baby—Catherine was. Caroline didn't know she'd given birth to a stillborn. She didn't know Catherine wasn't hers. But... maybe on some level, she sensed it. A few years later, she started having nightmares—babies crying, babies turning into monsters. Coincidentally, the dreams started after I was born." I stood up and started pacing, unable to keep still. "And I think she looked at me and felt it. Knew it, somehow. That I wasn't hers. She m