“Hello. I'd like to schedule an abortion.”
The doctor glanced at Mavis Swanson's prenatal report. “Ms. Swanson, your baby is perfectly healthy. Are you sure you want to terminate?”
Mavis stared at the report, at the tiny shape already taking form. Her eyes were rimmed red, but in the end her voice came out without a single waver：
“I'm sure.”
The doctor didn't try to talk her out of it. Instead she said, flat and procedural：“An abortion requires both spouses to be present. Where is your husband?”
Husband?
When the two of them had been kidnapped together, Bartholomew Henson had saved Sonia Swanson. On their wedding anniversary, when he'd chosen to abandon her and spend the whole night at Sonia's side, she had told herself the truth: she had no husband, and it was time to go.
“My husband is very busy. He doesn't have time to come with me. But he'll definitely agree to terminating the baby.”
With that, Mavis pulled out her phone and sent Bartholomew a message：
「I'm at the hospital to terminate the baby. Do you agree?」
His reply came almost instantly：
「Fine.」
Mavis gave the doctor a bitter smile：“You see? My husband agrees.”
In the end, the doctor scheduled the procedure for her.
But the doctor didn't know that no matter what she sent, Bartholomew's reply was always the same single word：「Fine.」
Over the past year, every one of the one thousand seven hundred and twenty-three messages she'd sent had earned the same prompt, flawless reply：「Fine.」
Not because Bartholomew answered every word she said, but because he had long ago set an auto-reply on her chat thread.
Bartholomew didn't know she was about to terminate the child he'd been longing for.
Still less did he know that once the child was gone, she was going to leave him completely.
……
The procedure was quick. Two hours later, the unformed child had been stripped entirely from her body.
The cold instruments churned ceaselessly inside her, but the pain in her flesh was nothing next to the pain in her heart.
After she came out of the operating room, the doctor prescribed her some medication and told her to rest properly once she got home, or she'd do lasting damage to her body.
Mavis's face was deathly pale, her hand pressed against her lower abdomen：
“Doctor, thank you. There's one more thing I have to trouble you with. This is my first child. Could I keep the placenta?”
The doctor frowned and asked gravely：“What do you want it for?”
Mavis smiled, the bleakest smile：
“My husband's birthday is coming up soon. This is the birthday gift I'm leaving him.”
The doctor looked at her like she was looking at a lunatic, but it was her child after all, so she had the nurse below handle it and gave it to Mavis.
Mavis didn't take it home. She left it at the hospital.
“Keep the placenta in storage here for now. One month from today, on my husband's birthday, I'll send someone to collect it.”
Mavis took a cab home. Bracing her waist, she stepped through the door and saw a table covered in chocolates and roses.
Bartholomew lifted his eyes, saw her, and immediately rose, pulling her toward the coffee table, joy he couldn't hide all over his face：
“Mavis, come taste these chocolates. Sonia's starting at the company soon, and I want to give her a gift. I bought dozens of kinds, all the ones she loves, but it's a little too many. Help me pick out the few she likes best. You're her sister, you must know her tastes well.”
Mavis's arm went stiff. She looked at the table buried in chocolate and gave a self-mocking laugh.
A dozen kinds of chocolate, every one of them a favorite of Sonia's, and Bartholomew remembered each one without a single slip.
The pain in her abdomen and her chest drained the color from her lips bit by bit, and her body trembled before she could stop it.
She raised her eyes, gazing intently at Bartholomew, and suddenly felt unmoored.
She thought of how she'd once been upset because Bartholomew never remembered she liked dark chocolate.
Back then, his face all weariness, he'd said：“Mavis, I'm busy. The company keeps me run off my feet every day. Where would I find the time to memorize little preferences like yours? Can you stop being so unreasonable?”
The annoyance on his face had pushed Mavis into self-doubt, made her think she was the one nitpicking.
Bartholomew was busy with projects worth tens of billions every day. It was only natural he wouldn't remember her preferences.
Not until Bartholomew knew her sister Sonia's tastes by heart did she finally understand. It wasn't that he had no time. It was that she wasn't worth it.
Seeing Mavis stay silent, Bartholomew grew impatient and pressed her to hurry up and choose.
Her abdomen hurt so badly that even her voice came out weak, but Bartholomew was so wrapped up in the joy of seeing Sonia that he didn't notice her suffering at all.
When they'd first gotten together, if Mavis so much as scraped the skin on her hand, Bartholomew would fuss over her endlessly.
Ever since Sonia, the Swanson family's true heiress, had been found, everything had changed.
Her parents favored Sonia. Her husband took Sonia's side.
Sonia had become the apple of everyone's eye, while she, the Swanson family's fake heiress, had long since stopped mattering to anyone, alive or dead.
Mavis drew a deep breath, pressed down the pain in her heart, and pointed at a few kinds at random：“These three, then.”
Bartholomew looked them over and frowned slightly：“No good. Sonia loves butterflies. She definitely won't like these shapes. Let's switch to the ones next to them instead.”
Bartholomew wrapped the chocolates with his own hands, then layered red roses on top, looking for all the world like a gift from a husband to his wife.
A dense, prickling ache spread through Mavis's heart. She couldn't even remember the last time Bartholomew had carefully prepared a gift for her.
Once, a shareholder at the company had fallen for him at first sight and brought him a bouquet of red roses. Bartholomew had thrown it straight into the trash in front of everyone.
He'd said：“Red roses are for people in love to give each other. You and I are nothing but ordinary colleagues. Red roses aren't appropriate.”
Bartholomew was a man who clearly understood boundaries. He understood all of it. And still he chose to keep up this murky closeness with Sonia.
Even if it meant fighting with her over it again and again.
Bartholomew finished wrapping the gift and rose to leave, only for Mavis to catch the hem of his clothes.
“Bartholomew, red roses are a gift for a wife. Sonia is only your wife's sister. Do you really think this is appropriate?”
She felt a flicker of defiance.
They had been childhood sweethearts. When the Henson family went bankrupt back then, it was she who had defied her parents and insisted on staying with him.
She'd built everything from nothing alongside him, slept in basements with him, lived on instant noodles, and gone, time after time, to swallow her pride and beg others for partnerships.
During their poorest year, she'd sold the hair she'd grown out for eight years, just to buy him a down jacket to ward off the cold.
After Bartholomew got his start and founded the company, Mavis had wanted no shares, no title. She'd only stayed by his side, serving as his little secretary.
She'd buried every bit of her own brilliance, putting all her heart and strength into supporting Bartholomew, lifting the Henson family back up to the new elite of Capital City.
Bartholomew had once promised her he'd never let her down, not for the rest of his life.
But that promise had lasted only three years.
The day Sonia was recovered by the Swanson family, Mavis learned for the first time that she herself had been adopted.
Sonia hated Mavis. She believed that because of Mavis's existence, the Swansons hadn't bothered to search for her in earnest, leaving her to suffer so much out in the world.
So she framed her, over and over.
At first, the elder Swansons were still willing to believe Mavis. But after it happened enough times, they decided she truly couldn't tolerate Sonia, their real heiress, and warned her.
If she dared to bully Sonia again, the Swansons would cut all ties with her for good.
Bartholomew dragged her thoughts back. He pried her fingers loose one by one, his eyes cold：
“Mavis, she's your sister. You're going to be jealous over even this?”
“She drifted out there for over twenty years. She's finally home. What's wrong with us being a little good to her?”
“Can you not be so selfish!”
Mavis stared at him blankly. It was the exact same face, and yet it felt like a stranger's.
She closed her eyes wearily. When she opened them again, she had already let him go.
Just as he reached the door, Mavis asked one more thing：
“The message I sent you today. Did you read it?”
“No. It's nothing but more complaints about Sonia, more whining about how wronged you are. I'm not your emotional trash can. I'm under no obligation to read your bad moods every single day.”
With a deafening “Bang! ” Bartholomew was gone.
Slowly, Mavis opened her palm. The crumpled abortion form stung her eyes red.
So he really hadn't read it. Bartholomew couldn't even be bothered to fake it anymore. He'd simply set an auto-reply on her chat thread.
No matter what she said, all she got back was one word: 「Fine」.
But from this day on, she would never tell him anything again.
She took out her phone and called her biological father, far away in Sicily.
“Dad, I want to go back to my real home. Can you come get me?”
