"Mom?" Rachel asked over the phone.

Shelby breathed a sigh of relief that her daughter had picked up. At least now she could stop her from meeting this kid. Who knows how dangerous he could be?

"Rachel, baby, we need to talk."

"About the threat that guy made?" She asked, assuming that Will had told her. Shelby made a noise of confirmation and took a deep breath, ready to tell her story. Before she could start, Rachel jumped in. "How many big secrets do you have? Will I ever know everything about you or are you always going to keep lying to me and telling me half-truths?"

Shelby physically recoiled at the tone of her daughter's voice, the jolt in her movement making her chair roll back, hitting her desk behind her. She let out an involuntary noise of shock from the impact.

"Rachel, you know why I couldn't tell you who I was earlier. I thought you understood that!" She argued, hurt by what Rachel said and at the thought of her distrust. It crossed her mind that she might have messed this relationship up from the start. All she could do now was try to repair the damage of over a decade of hiding the truth.

"But that's apparently not the only thing you kept from me, is it?" Rachel shot back and Shelby heard a door slamming and locking. She assumed Rachel had hidden away in the school bathroom for the relative privacy it held.

Shelby took a beat to decide where to take this. Of course, she knew why she was having trouble opening up completely to her daughter but putting that into words without Rachel taking what she said the wrong way would be difficult. She asked for a chance to explain herself and Rachel allowed it.

"Look, when you have the press prying into your private life all the time, you learn to act a certain way to only display the best side of yourself." Shelby tried to explain. To her credit, Rachel let Shelby pause to collect her thoughts without interrupting. "When I first met you, that was the side you had always known and that was who I wanted to be for you. Because of years of repressing the part of me that makes mistakes from everyone but my closest friends and my parents it's now hard for me to let anyone else see that."

"But you're my mom and I've loved you for that longer than I've known you as an actress. I want to know the real you and to be able to trust that there aren't any more secrets that could ruin things for us."

Rachel had a point and Shelby knew that. The girl had wanted to know who her mother was for so long she didn't care that she was famous or what she'd done in the past. She needed someone to be a mother figure in her life, anything else was irrelevant to how much Rachel loved her. For a second Shelby smiled in pride at how mature her daughter had become.

"I know that, I'm sorry. I'll work on letting you see the real me more." She replied, trying not to hide the insecurity in her voice. This was the first step to being honest and she had to take it. Hiding her flaws was definitely something she'd have to work hard to overcome but would do it for Rachel.

The touching moment between mother and daughter was cut short by the shrill ringing of the bell signalling the end of lunch.

"I've got to go." Rachel said.

"Ok. Call me when you get out of school and we'll talk more about this." Shelby promised. This was going to be the start of a clean slate for her and Rachel, if only she could pluck up the courage to tell her the whole story.

True to his word, at the end of the school day Will Schuester went to meet whoever had sent the anonymous message to Rachel.

As he walked on to the football field, a loud voice boomed over the speakers.

"What are you doing here, butt chin?" Sue Sylvester shouted out.

"Sue?" Will called back. "It was you?"

"Of course it was me, William." She said, as she walked down from the announcer's box and onto the football field to meet him.

"This is taking it too far even by your standards. And how did you even find out?"

Sue chuckled. "I bribed one of the footballers to flirt with your old friend April after I caught him cheating on one of my Cheerios with another one of my Cheerios, who shall remain nameless." She told her story as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, leaving Will feeling like he should've been able to guess she would be behind the note in some convoluted way.

"Sue this is completely unfair! You shouldn't be punishing Rachel or Shelby for some mistake from the past that wasn't either of their faults."

"And I wouldn't have to be if Rachel herself had showed up here. I would've just told her what she needed to know and let everything blow up by itself. Instead, she sent your incompetent self down here and now I'll be forced to tell the press."

"What did they ever do to you?" Will asked.

"Did you never wonder why I hated your pathetic little glee club so much?" Sue spat. "Because they all have these dreams of Broadway or some multi-platinum album and they haven't got a chance in Hell of getting it. The arts crush dreams, William. It's better I crush them first."

"Then why attack Shelby's reputation and her relationship with Rachel? She hasn't been in glee club for decades."

"Because I should've been Elphaba." Sue shouted. "But she stole it me. Finding out that I could destroy both her and your precious glee club was a bonus. I'd have been happy just ruining Shelby's career but getting rid of your best singer was a lovely surprise even I couldn't have anticipated."

"You don't have to do this, Sue."

"It's too late, an email was been sent to every national magazine the second I saw someone other than Rachel walk on to the field. Have fun explaining this to your girlfriend."

"Shelby told Rachel over lunch. This won't break them." Will replied confidently. The idea of Shelby's secret getting out to the press was far from desirable but at least Sue couldn't split mother and daughter up.

"Are you sure about that?" Sue asked.

"Yes."

"Because I heard from a reliable source, that may or may not have been Becky listening to a phone conversation in the girls bathroom, that Shelby never got round to telling Rachel anything. She did, however, promise that they would have no more secrets so imagine how young Rachel Berry will feel when the press knows something about her dear mother before she does."

With that Will stormed off, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket as he did and searching desperately for Shelby's number. He hit dial and waited for her to pick up, which thankfully didn't take long.

"Shell, we have a problem. Sue leaked the story to the press when I showed up instead of Rachel. You need to tell her now before they print the story."

"Wait, what? Since when was Sue involved?" Shelby asked, knowing of Will's rival at McKinley from his many anecdotes about her.

"She sent a footballer to get information from April. Apparently she's pissed that you beat her for the role of Elphaba."

"I've got to tell Rachel." Shelby said, panicked.

"Good luck. Call me later if you need to." Will offered, knowing Shelby would probably need someone to cry to later. He could tell that she still blamed herself for what happened, despite his numerous attempts to convince her otherwise. This was going to hit her hard but Will believed that she could bounce back from it and vowed to help her and Rachel any way he could.

Rachel decided to wait until she was home before calling Shelby. After Quinn's accident she knew better than to risk using her phone while driving.

Once she arrived at her house she was greeted by the sound of the news channel playing in the living room and her dads having some heated debate. What could that be about?

"Rachel, honey, is that you?" Hiram called out.

"Yes Daddy."

"Can you come in here for a minute?"

Rachel obliged and went to see what all the arguing had been about. Once she entered the living room her eyes were immediately drawn to the flat-screen television on the opposite wall that showed her mom's face in the top corner of the news report.

"Why is mom on the news?" She asked.

"You might want to sit down." Leroy suggested. Instantly a whole range of terrible thoughts rushed through Rachel's head. What had happened? Was her mom ok? Was this about the note she received earlier?"

The two men exchanged a look, silently communicating who was going to break the news to Rachel. Hiram took point, taking a breath and turning back to face his daughter.

"Someone has leaked some information about Shelby's past to the press. We don't know if it's true or not and her phone has been engaged every time we've tried to call." He explained.

"She's probably just trying to sort things out with Kimberly." Leroy added. They had been having a lot of contact with Shelby's agent in recent weeks who had been trying to sort out the onslaught of press issues coming their way. It seemed to have come at a bad time since Shelby's publicist had taken some time off and left the job to her agent. They had to admit Kimberly had been good at what she did though, especially under the unusual circumstances.

"What are they saying about her?" Rachel asked. At that moment the newsreader launched into a summary of the top stories, including Shelby's, and Rachel grabbed the remote to hear if from the television.

"The latest skeleton from everyone's favourite Broadway star's closet was released today." The woman started. "Following news of a secret daughter last week it has come to light that she was involved in yet another scandal when she was younger."

"It was not a scandal!" Rachel yelled at the screen. "Why are they making it sound so bad? She was doing a nice thing for you!"

"I don't know, honey. Probably just trying to increase ratings." Leroy reasoned.

"At our expense?" She shouted, outraged that people could twist a selfless deed into a scandal.

She turned her attention back to the screen to catch the rest of the story.

"Sources claim that Shelby was in part responsible for a high school student's permanent paralysis after he almost drowned at an out of control party. No word yet from Corcoran on the legitimacy of this claim but we will keep you posted. Check out our website for more details on Shelby Corcoran's dramatic few weeks of revelations."

"How could Shelby do that?" Rachel screamed. "She said we were being honest with each other! Why wouldn't she tell me?" She took a beat before a realisation hit her. "She was going to tell me something earlier. Do you think this was it?"

Hiram and Leroy looked clueless but nodded anyway, not wanting Rachel to fly off the handle before she knew all the facts.

"You should call her." Hiram suggested.

"I don't want to speak to her." She admitted. "Not after what she'd done to that poor boy."

"They've probably made it out to be worse than it is, Rach. Like they did with the surrogacy."

"How could she have done something like that?" The young girl cried.

Rachel didn't wait for an answer, instead storming out the door and down the street. She had left her bag behind and knew she wasn't in a fit state to drive. She burst into a run around the corner until she was far enough away that her dads would take a while finding her.

Once she was sure she was clear of the house, she sat on a secluded bench and began to cry, her body shaking with tears and anger. Her strong emotions only served to fuel each other until eventually she cried herself into exhaustion, falling asleep on the cold bench.