Chapter 4

Nancy Davis POV

When I woke again, I was in a hospital room.

A stranger sat by my bed, a caregiver in her fifties, her head lowered as she knitted a sweater.

Seeing my eyes open, the caregiver put down her work and hurried out to call the doctor.

The attending physician was a woman in her forties. After looking through my medical records, she spoke with anger barely held back in her voice.

“Do you know how hard it was for you to conceive this baby? How could you come for a prenatal checkup alone? Well, now the child is gone, and it will be almost impossible for you to get pregnant again.”

I froze.

I had been pregnant?

My hand moved on its own to cover my lower abdomen.

My abdomen was wrapped in gauze, flat and empty.

So, without my knowing, I had another child.

The child we had hoped for for so many years.

After that car accident, the doctors had determined that it would be nearly impossible for me to conceive again.

Theodore Foster and I had grieved over it for a long time.

I had even secretly gone to hospital after hospital, searching for treatment and medicine, swallowing countless bitter remedies and going through endless examinations.

I thought it would be impossible in this lifetime.

Perhaps heaven had taken pity on me after all, giving me this miracle when I was at my most desperate.

And yet this miracle had been destroyed by the child’s own father, with his own hands, all to protect another woman.

My eyes burned until they ached. Every last bit of strength I had left went into clenching my fists.

My lower abdomen hurt. My heart hurt. Every inch of my body hurt.

I bit down hard on my lower lip, so hard that blood seeped from the corner of my mouth.

The female doctor looked at me and seemed unable to bear it. Her tone softened.

“You’re still young. When you meet the wrong person, you have to cut your losses in time.”

The caregiver beside her chimed in too.

“That’s right. You were unconscious for a whole day, and not a single person from your family or his came by. No one even asked about you.”

“Look at Mr. Foster. He’s so busy, but he still accompanied his wife for her prenatal checkup.”

“Although this time, he accidentally ran into you and caused your injury, he had his assistant pay all your medical bills right away and even hired me to take care of you.”

As she spoke, the caregiver took a business card from the drawer and placed it by my pillow.

“His assistant told me that once you’re discharged, you should contact him to discuss compensation afterward. I heard this Mr. Foster isn’t short on money. Once you get the money, if you need to divorce, then divorce. Let go of that scumbag and start over on your own.”

I stared at the ceiling without speaking.

Family?

What family did I have left?

My father had died in a car accident while delivering food to Theodore Foster.

My mother lay in a hospital room upstairs, relying on expensive medication to keep a heart that might stop at any moment beating.

My husband was with his new wife.

As for my mother-in-law, Fiona Foster...

Back when Theodore Foster was poor, Fiona Foster praised me whenever she saw me, saying I was capable and virtuous. She was so attentive it almost felt like she was trying to curry favor, terrified that I would look down on Theodore Foster for having no money and leave him.

Later, after Theodore Foster succeeded in his business, Fiona Foster’s attitude toward me changed. She remained polite, but she became much colder.

After my miscarriage three years ago, when the doctor said Nancy Davis was almost impossible to get pregnant again, Fiona Foster changed her face completely.

Not only did she often make things difficult for me, she also blamed me openly and in private for cutting off the Foster family line.

Theodore Foster flew into a rage over it and forbade Fiona Foster from coming to our home again, completely separating me from my mother-in-law.

At this moment, what relatives did I have who could come to my side?

I lay alone on a hospital bed, saying goodbye to our unborn child.

Meanwhile, Theodore Foster and his darling wife were looking forward to the arrival of their child.

How ironic.

My phone lit up. It was a photo from that unfamiliar number.

In the photo, on a beach where the sea met the sky, Sophie Scott leaned in Theodore Foster’s arms.

Theodore Foster held her from behind, his chin resting on her shoulder.

The two of them smiled at the camera, sweet and perfectly in sync.

A line of text followed underneath:

[Your ex-husband is on his honeymoon. You can just lie in the hospital by yourself.]

Right after that, a message from Theodore Foster popped up on WhatsApp:

[Nancy, something urgent came up at the company. I need to go on a business trip for a week. Take good care of yourself. I’ll bring you a gift when I come back. I love you.]

That was right. Newlywed bliss naturally meant a honeymoon.

Now I knew who that unfamiliar number belonged to.

It was Sophie Scott.

I looked at the messages the two of them had sent one after the other.

One showing off, one lying.

It was simply the funniest joke I had ever heard in my life.

I laughed and laughed, and then tears streamed down my face.

Over the next few days, Sophie Scott never tired of it. Every day, she sent me photos.

On the first day, it was Theodore Foster personally feeding Sophie Scott strawberries, his profile wearing a gentle smile.

Back in college, Theodore Foster had fed me strawberries like that too.

But in recent years, it had happened less and less.

On the second day, it was a photo of the two of them on a yacht.

Sophie Scott wore a bikini, and Theodore Foster held her from behind, intimate to the extreme.

On the third day, it was a photo of a diamond bracelet.

The caption read:

[He said this is a gift for the mother of our child.]

I touched my empty lower abdomen, my heart icy cold.

On the fourth day, the photo Sophie Scott sent made my hands tremble violently.

Messy bedsheets. A man’s bare shoulders and back. A woman’s arm draped over him.

The caption read:

[He said you’re like a dead fish. Boring as hell.]

I flipped my phone face down on the bed and closed my eyes.

Tears slid from the corners of my eyes into the pillow.

Thanks to Sophie Scott, these past few days, Nancy Davis’s tears had barely stopped.

I did not want to let him affect my emotions anymore.

But we had more than twenty years of feelings between us. I could not control it.