My husband, Ethan Vance, lost everything and his family was gone, and I just walked away.
After he’d rebuilt his empire, I’d come knocking every year.
The first year, I held our daughter. He threw fifty thousand dollars at me and told me to get lost.
The second year, I brought him my late-stage cancer diagnosis report.
He didn’t even glance at it, gave me a hundred thousand, and told me to disappear forever.
The third and fourth years, I vanished from this world, just as he’d wished.
Until the fifth year, he received a call from our daughter.
“Mommy, when are you bringing food? I’m hungry.”
“Mommy, I’m so hungry.”
I watched our daughter, Grace, sneak back home from the orphanage. She found my old phone, charged it, and started calling, just like I used to.
When I was terminally ill, I often ordered takeout, and the delivery riders would always deliver my order last.
When Grace was hungry, I’d call to rush the rider.
So Grace thought if she just made a call, her little tummy would be full.
Now, she dialed, just like me, but she called the emergency contactEthan Vance.
She called again and again.
The dimly lit screen illuminated her innocent face.
I wanted to stop her, but my hand passed right through her body.
A wave of frustration washed over me.
It had been three years. How could I keep forgetting I was just a spirit?
“Grace, don’t call him. He won’t answer.”
He probably still thought I was just some gold-digger.
“Go open the small box on the table. There’s money I left for you in there.”
Most of the money I got from Ethan, I put into a trust fund for Grace’s future education and living expenses.
I left a thousand dollars in the box for any unexpected needs she might have.
As if by some sixth sense, Grace picked up that little box.
But then, a crisp, cold voice came from the other end of the phone.
“Aurora?”
I froze, realizing the call had been going on for a minute already.
“Didn’t I tell you to go die somewhere?”
His tone was calm, emotionless, just as cruel as ever.
I twisted my fingers, feeling a pang of shame to be cursed at by her father, right in front of our daughter.
Even if they didn’t know each other.
His voice was mocking: “Want more money? Fine, come beg me.”
Grace stared at the phone, her eyes shining with delight. Her tiny, sweet voice piped up: “Uncle! When are you bringing me food? I’m hungry!”
Silence on the other end for a moment.
“Let Aurora answer the phone.”
“You mean Mommy?”
Grace’s face instantly fell: “But she can’t answer the phone anymore.”
Ethan’s voice deepened: “What happened to her?”
“Mommy said she’s sleeping.”
A four-and-a-half-year-old child had no concept of life and death.
A scoff echoed from the other end, clearly not buying such a lame excuse.
“Is that so? I’d like to see what new scheme she’s cooking up.”
I wanted to smile, but I couldn’t.
What new scheme could I possibly be cooking up?
Even trying to float over and scare him felt beyond my power.
After hanging up, Grace curled up in the corner of the sofa, waiting patiently, a slight curve on her lips.
But I was pacing frantically.
Ethan hated me so much. What would he do to my daughter?
An hour later, there was a knock at the door.
My heart lurched: “Don’t open the door, Grace!”
Grace had already opened it.
Outside, there was no food as she’d expected, only a few security guards in suits.
They surveyed the room, found no one else, and took Grace away.
“No!”
I was helpless, forced to watch my daughter being taken.
When Ethan opened his door, he saw Grace, tears streaming down her face.
He glanced behind her.
“Where’s that woman?”
He was talking about me.
I lowered my eyes. I didn’t even deserve a name from him anymore.
A security guard reported truthfully: “When we arrived, only the little girl was in the house.”
Grace broke free from their grasp and hugged Ethan’s leg.
“Uncle, bad guys caught me.”
I was shocked.
Grace had only met Ethan twice before.
She didn’t know Ethan was the father who refused to acknowledge her.
But blood ran deep, making her instinctively trust him.
Ethan seemed uncomfortable with her hug, frowning as he scoffed: “She’s so cruel, pushing her own bastard child out to face my anger.”
I shook my head frantically: “No, Grace isn’t a bastard!”
She’s our child.
He wouldn’t believe it.
After Grace was born, I found out she had the Vance family’s hereditary heart condition, and I had sought him out then.
Ethan’s words still echoed in my ears.
“Aurora, do you think I’m the same Ethan as before? You fooled me once, do you think you can fool me twice?”
“Trying to pin a child you had with some other guy on me?”
“Get lost. Here’s twenty thousand. Consider it a buy-out for our five years together.”
I said, “It’s not enough.”
He didn’t want our daughter, but she needed money for her surgery.
Ethan gnashed his teeth in anger: “You really are obsessed with money. Fine, here’s fifty thousand. Because that’s all you’re worth.”
Five years of love, reduced to a mere transaction.
I knew this would make Ethan despise me even more, but it didn’t matter. Grace had her surgery with that money.
She would live a healthy life now, and it was worth it.
Now, Ethan asked Grace coldly, “Tell me, where is your mother hiding?”
Grace looked up, teary-eyed. Her features were strikingly similar to mine.
Ethan seemed a little lost in thought.
“Mommy sleeps during the day, and at night, she turns into a star.”
At her words, Ethan’s expression hardened, and he pulled his leg away.
“Now she’s resorting to playing the victim?”
Grace tumbled to the floor. I floated over, using all my strength, but I couldn’t catch her, watching her fall right through my embrace.
The little box she clutched tightly also fell.
Grace, who hadn’t eaten for two days, struggled twice before finally getting back up. A sharp pang twisted in my chest.
Ethan watched coldly from the side, his fists inexplicably clenched.
Grace hugged the little box, pretending to be brave, and patted her bottom: “Mommy, it doesn’t hurt.”
I was startled, thinking she could see me.
Then I remembered I was paralyzed in bed with late-stage stomach cancer.
She learned to take care of me when she was two, even picking up plastic bottles while I slept.
One day, she got into a fight with a stray dog and came back covered in bruises. I was so worried I coughed up blood.
She, instead, smiled and comforted me.
Saying it didn’t hurt.
Hearing her words, Ethan looked around: “Aurora, come out!”
The house was dead silent.
I was standing right in front of him, but he couldn’t see me.
Ethan waited a moment, found no sign of me.
He sneered: “How cruel. To even use a child this big.”
“Just send her away.”
Ethan left those words and walked into his house.
The security guards left Grace on the curb of the busy street.
It was already dark.
Grace stood there for a moment, lost, in the unfamiliar street.
She looked bewildered, asking the little box: “Mommy, which way should I go?”
My heart ached so much I couldn’t breathe. I could only pray the orphanage would quickly realize Grace was missing.
Grace looked at the moon in the sky.
“Mommy, can I find you by following the moon?”
She was too hungry to walk and fell twice.
She stumbled and found a trash can, discovering half a leftover cake.
Her eyes lit up. She picked up the stale, sour-smelling piece of cake and eagerly put it into her mouth.
I cried, trying to stop her: “Grace, don’t eat that, you’ll get sick!”
She couldn’t hear me, but the cake in her hand was suddenly knocked away.
It was Ethan, who had appeared out of nowhere.
I hadn’t even noticed him.
He looked at the grubby Grace, gritting his teeth:
“Aurora, this is how you treat your daughter, huh?”
He led Grace into a car parked nearby.
Grace cried and screamed, all affection for him gone: “Why won’t you let me eat? You’re a bad guy!”
Then, she tried to lick the crumbs from her fingers.
Ethan grabbed her hand, wiping her tiny hand clean with a wet wipe, his face a mix of disgust and gentleness: “Didn’t your mother teach you not to pick up things from the ground and eat them?”
His movements were gentle yet meticulous.
When we were dating, he always took care of me so attentively.
My friends used to call him my ‘dad’ boyfriendso mature and stable.
But Grace was as stubborn as I was.
When she pushed him away, her little hand slapped him across the face: “I don’t want you, bad guy, to tell me what to do!”
I gasped in fright, looking anxiously at Ethan.
I saw that he wasn’t angry.
He lowered his eyelashes, threw away the wet wipe, and turned his head to the window, avoiding looking at Grace, whose profile was identical to mine.
His tone was mocking: “Just as stubborn as your mother, isn’t she? Good thing she’s not mine.”
I smiled bitterly. I’m sorry to disappoint you, then.
The little box slipped from Grace’s embrace.
He bent down to pick it up.
He glanced at the dirty wooden box, finding it vaguely familiar.
I instinctively wanted to stop him.
If he opened it, he would discover the truth from all those years ago.
He would live a lifetime of guilt.
Better for him to hate me than to feel guilty.
But then I looked at Grace, and I hoped she could live under her father’s protection.
I was conflicted and nervous.
To my surprise, he tossed the wooden box back into Grace’s arms: “What a piece of junk to pick up.”
For a moment, I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed.
Ethan took Grace home.
He told Martha, the housekeeper, to cook something for her. He glanced at Grace’s bony frame and added, “Make it something easy to digest.”
“I don’t know how that woman raised a child. Thin as a rail. Good thing I never married someone like her.”
I nodded.
I really was an inadequate mother.
Ethan sat at the dining table, watching Grace pick out the carrots.
He frowned and instinctively said, “Aurora Hayes, no picky eating.”
Both he and I froze.
“I’ll keep her right here, under my watch. I don’t believe Aurora won’t come to get you.”
With those words, Ethan stood up and went upstairs, his back retreating, as if in a hasty retreat.
Grace’s eyes lit up: “Really? Will Mommy come get me?”
As night fell, Grace refused to sleep in the guest room, insisting on sleeping on the sofa.
Martha tried to persuade her, but it was no use. Ethan seemed a little impatient: “Kids are such a bother. Let her be, she can sleep wherever she wants.”
Grace slept on the sofa for three days. Ethan, seeing her curled up in a tiny ball, frowned deeply: “Is your mother that cruel to you? Doesn’t she ever let you sleep in a bed?”
Grace shook her head: “No way. Mommy’s on the sofa.”
Ethan looked bewildered, but I was crying uncontrollably.
Because we only had one sofa at home.
When I was gravely ill, I often lay on the sofa, drifting in and out of consciousness. Grace thought I was just sleeping.
She would quietly crawl into my arms and hug me.
Even at the orphanage, Grace liked to stay on the sofa in the reception area, as if sleeping in my arms.
Ethan had been working from home lately, often staring blankly at the door.
He watched Grace, who was also looking at the door, and asked:
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Grace Hayes.”
“Grace, your mother abandoned you too.”
Grace instantly became a stubborn little beast: “No way! My mommy would never abandon me!”
“Is that so? Then why hasn’t she come to pick you up after a whole week?”
Just as he finished speaking.
The doorbell rang.
Ethan immediately stood up, a knowing smile appearing on his face.
“Your mother’s here.”
Grace scrambled up from the floor, looking expectantly at the door.
The door opened.
Both of them froze.
Grace pouted: “Liar, it’s not Mommy at all.”
The newcomer was a striking girl in a red dress. I had seen her once before, the second time Grace and Ethan met.
That was at the women’s health clinic, right after Grace’s surgery.
Ethan had emerged with her, looking very intimate.
The girl glanced at Grace, confused: “Where did this child come from?”
Ethan replied casually: “Just picked her up off the street.”
The girl’s eyes widened: “You’re picking up kids now?”
She suddenly remembered something, pointing at the flower bed in the yard, furious: “Who pulled up my roses!”
My heart ached inexplicably. So, they were already living together.
Ethan glanced at Grace, who barely reached his knee. Grace guiltily averted her gaze and went back to the sofa.
Ethan sounded disinterested: “It’s just flowers, we can plant more.”
Seeing him say that, the girl didn’t press the issue.
She followed Ethan into the house. As soon as she sat on the sofa, she covered her nose with her hand: “What’s that strange smell? Ever since I got pregnant, I’ve been really sensitive to smells.”
I looked at her, shocked, at her still flat stomach.
Watching Ethan and Grace’s interactions these past few days, I had still hoped that once he discovered Grace was his child, he would treat her well.
But now that he had a child with another woman, what would become of my daughter?
Ethan also noticed an unusual smell in the air. He looked at Grace on the sofa.
He walked over, lifted Grace, and pulled back the sofa cushion.
A pile of food wrapped in plastic bags and seven withered flowers were scattered all over the floor.
Both of them were dumbfounded.
Ethan’s veins throbbed: “Grace, what are you doing?”
Grace cried out: “Don’t touch my things! These are all for Mommy!”
I remembered my tiny daughter picking through trash outside. Some kind-hearted people, pitying her, would buy her food.
She wouldn’t eat a single bite, always bringing it home for me.
At the orphanage, the director caught her a few times and taught her. She learned to eat first herself, then save the best things for me.
The other children often avoided Grace because of her smell, not wanting to play with her.
Ethan’s gaze was complicated: “Why would you do this?”
Grace cried sadly: “Mommy never got to eat any of these good things, and you said Mommy would come to pick me up, so I wanted to save them for when I see her.”
Ethan tried to sneer, but couldn’t: “Didn’t she go off to live a good life with some rich guy? What hasn’t she eaten?”
Grace shook her head: “No way. Mommy always said she wasn’t hungry.”
At first, I said I wasn’t hungry so Grace would eat more. Later, when my illness worsened, I truly couldn’t eat.
The girl beside Ethan asked: “Why is there an urn on the floor?”
It was the little wooden box that had fallen.
Ethan stared blankly: “An urn?”
No wonder it looked familiar, like he’d seen it somewhere before.
A stack of money and a letter fell out of the box.
This letter felt like a thousand pounds. Ethan’s trembling hand tried several times before he finally picked it up.
On the envelope was his all-too-familiar handwriting: [To my sweet daughter, Grace].
He opened the envelope.
In an instant, his eyes turned red.
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