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Daisy’s relationship with her mother is a performance dressed up as devotion, a script written in scripture and sealed with silence.
On the surface, they are the perfect Christian mother and daughter—Elizabeth, the elegant, pious matriarch, and Daisy, the demure, ever-obedient shadow trailing just half a step behind.
They move in harmony at charity galas, church fundraisers, and society luncheons, a seamless duet of practiced smiles and rehearsed gestures. Daisy knows her role by heart—the adopted daughter who should be grateful, the living testament to Elizabeth’s generosity.
But love, real love , has never been part of the bargain.
Elizabeth Albrecht didn’t just want a daughter—she wanted an accessory.
After four sons, her body had been deemed too frail for another pregnancy, but her vanity couldn’t accept a life without a girl to dress in lace and parade at church functions.
It was the late 90s, and among her social circle—wealthy, white, and devoutly performative in their charity—adopting a child of color had become the ultimate status symbol. A living testament to their benevolence. A tiny, exotic proof of their open hearts.
Elizabeth envisioned a dark-skinned child, something striking and photogenic—a little Guatemalan girl with braids, perhaps, or an Ethiopian baby with wide, soulful eyes. Something the church ladies would coo over, something that would make her friends sigh with envy.
"Oh, Elizabeth, how brave you are. How bold, how kind! to save it from the miserable life it would have had!"
Finn, ever pragmatic, vetoed it immediately.
A darker child would draw too much attention, he said.
Might have difficulties assimilating. Might be too different .
What they needed was something docile, something that wouldn’t disrupt the pristine order of their Swiss-German household.
And so they compromised.
East Asians were palatable.
East Asians were quiet.
East Asians, Finn had heard, were obedient and submissive.
Elizabeth had pouted at first but Finn’s patience was wearing thin.
So Elizabeth draped her expensive wool coats and they boarded a plane to Korea, prepared to pick something she can mold into something worthy of the Albrecht name.
That first day in the orphanage chapel, Daisy had been the only child not begging for attention. While the others waved and recited Bible verses with performative gusto, Daisy simply sat on the back pew, small hands pressed together, whispering prayers no one else cared to hear. When she looked up—when her round face lit with that nervous, automatic smile—Elizabeth’s heart clenched in a way it never had for her sons.
Here was something precious.
Here was something hers .
Elizabeth fell in love with Daisy in that moment.
Not as a daughter, but as a delicate thing to cherish.
Not as a mother loves a child, but as a collector loves a new acquisition.
When Daisy prayed in that orphanage chapel, small hands clasped tight enough to bruise, Elizabeth saw something divine in her stillness. Not piety—but potential. Here was a child who could be molded into the perfect daughter; one who wouldn't scream like the boys, who wouldn't track mud on her floors, who would sit quietly at her feet while she hosted Bible studies, one who would love her.
A daughter that is hers , not Finn's.
For a brief, shining moment, Daisy was everything Elizabeth wanted.
For a little while, at least, Elizabeth adored her.
It didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off.
Daisy began to falter, she cried and she drooled and she was fidgeted.
She was too needy and she was too much.
Adoration cooled into tolerance.
Elizabeth’s affection is a currency, dispensed only when Daisy meets the unspoken criteria—when she is quiet, when she is useful, when she is flawless.
A perfect daughter doesn’t complain. A perfect daughter doesn’t cry.
So Daisy polishes herself into something acceptable. Her skin bleached to an alabaster sheen, her voice soft and agreeable, her posture straight as a hymnbook spine. She learns early that love is not unconditional—it is earned, and it can be revoked without warning.
The rules are never spoken aloud, but Daisy memorizes them anyway.
Be beautiful, but never vain.
Elizabeth praises her when she glows under the careful application of toners and serums, but a single lingering glance in the mirror earns a sigh.
“Vanity is a sin, Daisy. You mustn’t dwell on yourself.”
Be helpful, but never noticed .
Daisy is expected to arrange flowers for church events, tutor the younger choir members, and pour tea for Elizabeth’s guests—but if she speaks out of turn, Elizabeth’s hand settles on her wrist, a silent command to disappear.
Be pious, but never righteous .
She must pray, but not too fervently. She must serve, but never boast. She must embody humility, but never question why the holiest people in their church are also the cruelest.
The punishments are never loud.
Elizabeth does not raise her voice. She does not need to. A single arched brow, a pause just a beat too long before responding, the way her gaze slides past Daisy as if she isn’t there—these are the weapons that cut deeper than any belt ever could.
The first time Daisy tried to confess to being molested, Elizabeth’s fingers tightened around her teacup, her voice low and final,"We don’t speak of such things. You must forgive and forget."
And so Daisy did. She always does.
She followed her mother's every rule—because only when she is good she'll be loved, but she will never be enough for her mother, and it will never be enough for Daisy.
Because when Rose was born, Daisy learned what real love looked like.
Rose.
Against all odds, Elizabeth had one more child—her miracle baby.
The way Elizabeth’s entire body softened when she held her, the way her voice lost its measured cadence and melted into something warm and unguarded.
Daisy had never been held like that. She had never been looked at like that. That was when Daisy understood, once and for all, what she truly was.
Not a daughter.
A placeholder.
A trend that had gone out of style.
And when Rose died, Elizabeth’s grief was a towering, sacred thing—while Daisy’s sorrow was an inconvenience.
"Must you cry so loudly?" Elizabeth had murmured once, her own eyes dry, "Rose never did."
Rose had been a baby. Rose had never cried because she had never lived long enough to learn how to scream, far too weak with a whisper of a cry.
But she kept quiet because a perfect daughter doesn’t have nightmares about the sister whose death she might have caused.
Daisy plays her part without complaint, she hid her nightmare and her fears and her guilt and her anger and her sadness and her sin and her—She prepares Elizabeth’s tea just so—Earl Grey, steeped exactly three minutes, no sugar, no lemon.
She wears the clothes Elizabeth selects, the perfumes Elizabeth approves of, the delicate silver cross necklace Elizabeth gave her on her seventh birthday.
She smiles when she is supposed to, speaks when she is spoken to, and folds her hands neatly in her lap to keep them from shaking.
She never talks about Rose anymore.
If she cries, it’s in the shower, sobs drowned beneath the stream.
Let the water cleanse her.
Let it purify her from the sin of being human
Daisy is a saint and her mother's little angel.
She doesn’t feel sadness.
She doesn't she feel anger.
Her mother had once said thoughts are prayers—nothing goods ever come from thinking about yourself.
So Daisy doesn’t.
Saints do not weep.
Saints do not rage.
Saints endure.
And saints are made of marble—cold, unyielding, perfect.
She will not crack.
She will not break.
But sometimes, in the quietest hours of the night, Daisy lets herself imagine what it might feel like to be loved without conditions.
To be held without being measured.
To be seen as something more than a well-behaved prop in Elizabeth’s perfect Christian narrative.
To be human.
It’s a dangerous thought.
So she presses her fingers to her mouth to stifle the scream that has been building inside her since the day she was brought here and tucks it away, smooths her nightgown, and kneels beside her bed to pray—not for herself, never for herself—but for Elizabeth, for the Albrecht.
Because a good daughter forgives.
And Daisy has always been very, very good.