She doesn't know this family, HER family; she doesn't recognise herself in any of them, not the ice cold mom or the goody-goody daughter. Even the dad doesn't feel like "her dad". He's more like the friendly parent of someone she met at school. Only the brother makes her feel like she might have someone she can call family in this house of coldness and curfews and moms who send cops to track her every move. She doesn't understand how she could ever have belonged to these people, wonders what it says about them that the only people she feels connected to is a brother who wasn't even around when she was 'taken'.
She's supposed to hate Lori now, supposed to nod her head and tell everyone how terrible her life was living with her kidnapper, and how happy she is to have been found by her 'real' family at last! But the truth is, she doesn't hate her. How could she, she's her mom, the one who chased her round parks when she was little and malls when she was older. She's the one who tried to be strict the first time she caught her sneaking home smelling of pot and instead went out at 2am to bring her home gummy bears when the munchies kicked in, and helped her eat the entire bag- lecturing her between mouthfuls about staying safe and never doing hard drugs.
Now she has to sit through dinner with people who claim to be her family but who never hug each other or laugh at shared jokes about books they're never going to read. Instead, her sister cooks FISH and does her homework and had never even been to a party and her brother sneaks around, unnoticed by either parent as they sit together in frigid silence, trying to convince her the life they have here is better than the one they ripped her away from. She's not buying it. she wants her mom, the one who gets a bad dye job and sneaks into her work, just to tell her she loves her more, even with the entire police-force hunting her. She wants the woman who encourages her to explore life, not the one who tries to control it!
She doesn't know why Lori took her, and not her sister, or both of them, but honestly, she thinks it might be the best thing ever happened to her. Being given back, was definitely to worst. She tries to imagine being part of this family, this fractured house filled with fractured people who try to pretend they all fit together, but she can't see it. She sees no resemblance here with who SHE is. At home, she knew she could come home to her eccentric mother who was as likely to laugh at her stories, as this 'mom' is to try and ground her, she knew if she did something really terrible, her mom would punish her, but not with screaming and interrogations but in a way she would genuinely regret doing it. She tries to imagine growing up here, with a mom who maybe wasn't so cold, but was just as unavailable, working 24/7. She wonders if maybe they'd have more in common if she hadn't been taken, if she would have turned out more like her sister, or if she would have turned out exactly the same and they would still rile each other up just as much. She thinks about what it would be like to have grown up with her twin, if they would have been like real sisters, having pillow fights and sharing secrets, but can't quite picture it- Lori's face morphing into the picture every time: mother, sister and friend rolled into one.
She hears them talking most nights, between bouts of stony silence, voices getting higher and higher until she can pick out every word as they yell about finding the monster who took their daughter and how could they never have noticed her taking such an interest, all those years ago. Carter thinks it's fairly obvious: she doesn't think they've ever really paid attention to any of them, not then, and certainly not now. Her sister acts like a mouse, scurrying about the house desperately trying to gain approval with her neat clothes and perfect grades and healthy meals for dinner, while her brother goes undetected, hiding his own "runaway backpack" at the back of his closet where no-one bothers to look, because why would they? He truly is the "replacement child", and now the original is back, he sinks even more into the background of his parents' already limited attention. She wonders if Lori could see what she sees, and decided to take her to simply make more room for her sister. Maybe these people would have fared better with only one child to ignore, rather than two. Whatever the reason, Carter finds she can only be thankful for the life she's had with her. She knows she's supposed to feel guilty about it now she's 'home'. Every time Elizabeth spears her with another agonized look upon seeing the pictures she pins proudly to the walls, she knows she SHOULD feel SOMETHING for this woman who had her daughter stolen. But she doesn't feel anything towards her, other than resentment for the life she's been taken from. She might technically have been stolen from these people, but Lori didn't steal her life from her, these people did, and she can't help but hate them for it.
She wonders how long they can possibly go on like this, before they all crack and fall apart. She still can't contemplate that this might be IT for her; her life forever, with this mom and this dad and this cold, broken family, so much more empty than the life she had with only one mom and no dads and no brothers of sisters. She still thinks that one day, they're going to walk in and tell her how sorry they are, but there's been a big mistake and Lori is waiting for her downstairs to take her home. She's half convinced that any day now a blonde girl with cool blue eyes in a neat sweater is going to turn up and say "hi, I'm the real Linden, you can let this one go now, I'm back!" and she'll be able to go home to her apartment with her crazy mom who tells her how much she loves her every day and who lets her go to parties wearing her brand new jacket and feeds her gummybears for dinner, just because. She thinks maybe she should write a book about it all, that it would make a pretty great story once it's all back to normal and she and her mom are sitting in a fro-yo shop laughing about how scary and crazy it all was.
Instead, she gets up every morning in a room that barely seems like hers, with a family who smile and just look like they're trying too hard. She plays juvenile pranks on Elizabeth that Lori would just laugh and shake her head at, to try and vent some of the resentment she feels at how NOT her mom this woman is. She pretends to go to school and instead skips out to do drugs she wouldn't have touched before this all happened, and ends up in hospital. She gives up even trying to play nice the more the days pass and no knock comes at the door and no one shows up telling them it was all a mistake. Instead, she vents all her venom, unfiltered in family therapy at the people who have taken everything from her and sneaks out to parties with people she barely knows and chugs back whatever drink they put in her hand, trying to block it all out. Eventually, she ends up alone, puking into yet another unfamiliar toilet, surrounded by unfamiliar people, in a life she doesn't fit into.
They send her to therapy and she can't help but think how ironic it is that she's supposed to have lived a horrible life, with an evil woman, and instead can barely recall a single bad memory. This supposedly normal family have therapy together, and therapy individually and every single one of them is secretly miserable inside, simply existing, miserable together in one house, surrounded by secrets they can't voice in case it rocks the already fragile boat.
Her brother asks if shes going to stay and she tells him she doesn't have an answer for him. The truth is, he's the only one she would regret leaving. She knows that if her mom was to make contact, she would be out the door in a second, racing back to her old life, not giving a second thought to the family she is supposed to belong with. She simply can't picture ever fitting in here. So she goes through the motions, day by day, riling up Elizabeth more and more- her pranks getting more and more vicious, the more she realises she may be stuck in this life, until she loses her energy for them and simply glares at the woman calling herself "mother". She sits silently through expensive therapy sessions and sneaks out most nights to find yet another party to kill her thoughts for a few hours, she drops behind in school to the point she stops even pretending to go- lying silently in bed every morning and waiting for someone to even notice she hasn't moved in days. She marks off every day of this not-life on her calendar and keeps herself going with the thought that tomorrow someone will tell her it was all a mistake, or tomorrow she'll wake up and it will all have been one big nightmare and her mom will be blaring music around their apartment. Tomorrow they'll simply tell her they've given up and are letting her go home to her mom… tomorrow it will all get better. Tomorrow it will all end…