Every child grows up believing that they are an indispensable part of their family. Yet every sibling also grows up hearing how they are apparently adopted. Payton Lee’s siblings often joked about how she didn’t look like her four younger siblings. A running family joke led to a DNA test that suddenly transformed the joke into a reality. “The idea that I have a different dad than my four younger siblings had honestly never crossed my mind until a few months ago,” Payton told PEOPLE. “I had always just thought none of us looked alike.”The joke began after Payton returned to her hometown and her brother mentioned that her siblings had been talking about how little she resembled them. Initially, she laughed it off, but when she began comparing old baby photos, she noticed how her siblings and her nephew looked alike, but she didn’t.For the first time ever, the 29-year-old began wondering if the joke could be a reality. She likely would have left the thought alone, but her mother-in-law surprised her and her youngest sister with DNA tests. “I don’t think I ever would have bought or taken one if it was up to me,” she says. “One of the hardest parts of all of this has been that I never really made the choice to take that test, so I wasn’t emotionally prepared for what it could actually uncover.”When the results arrived, Payton was out of town, and her siblings gathered at her sister’s house to open them together while she was on FaceTime. She saw it first: the sister she had always believed was her full sister was listed as her half-sister. Then Payton kept looking, and the discovery got bigger. Directly below her sister’s name was another half-sister, someone Payton had never heard of, making it clear that the biological relatives appearing on her paternal side belonged to an entirely different family.“That’s when it really hit me that the people on my father’s side were a completely different family,” she recalled. The result also meant something even harder to absorb: the man Payton had called Dad for 29 years was not her biological father.When she FaceTimed her dad to tell him the results, he didn’t believe it at first. “He made it very clear that this doesn’t change anything and I’m still his daughter!” she said. For her, her dad had always been the fun parent, the one who took them all for outings and trips and filled their childhood with happy memories. After learning that her mother had been about six months pregnant with Payton when her parents married, however, Payton found herself thinking about the discovery from his perspective, too. “I honestly felt really bad knowing that he entered that marriage believing I was his biological child,” she said.“He has had such a great attitude about everything and hasn’t held any resentment or been angry, which I don’t know if I would be able to do if I were in his shoes!” she said.For Payton, the experience also changed her thoughts about DNA testing at home, when one is expecting nothing more than just fun. “So take it from me,” Payton said, “DNA tests should never be taken lightly!”
