All I ever wanted, for as long as I could remember, was a home.
The very day my biological parents acknowledged me, they told me the wedding date was already set. A childhood spent drifting from place to place had left me terrified of marriage.
But Elmer gave me three months to think it over.
I was afraid of the dark, so Elmer set off fireworks for three straight nights. Everywhere I looked, the sky blazed as bright as daylight.
I loved gardenias, so Elmer built an entire greenhouse estate filled with them, climate be damned.
Once, I dreamed about a pastry I wanted to try. He drove nearly twenty hours through the night just to set it in front of me.
On our wedding day, the motorcade circled the city three times, a procession so lavish it brought Riverside City to a standstill.
When I got pregnant, he lit up like a kid who'd won the grand prize, giddy and breathless, before pulling me gently into his arms.
“Darlie, wherever I am, that's your home. Trust me. I'll get it right.”
The buzz of my phone ripped me out of the memory.
A notification from a flagged account. Elmer's.
In the photo, he had his arm around Odette and the two children, his expression soft.
The caption read：You are my greatest treasure.
I stared at those words until my vision blurred and my pupils lost focus.
The next time I opened my eyes, the cold of the floor had woken me.
My phone was full of messages and missed calls. Not a single one from my family.
The results about my baby had come in.
I barely made it two steps before the nanny and housekeeper's voices drifted over, dripping with scorn.
“What do you expect from a girl born to a mother who never raised her? Even after they took her back, neither parent gives a damn. Can't even keep her own child alive.”
“Exactly. No parents her whole life, and now a perfectly healthy pregnancy ends with a dead baby. Bad luck follows that woman like a shadow.”
I dug my nails into my palms until the pain bit deep, a chill spreading through my chest.
I hadn't expected it. The staff this household had treated so generously were nothing but ungrateful vipers.
I drew a slow breath and spoke, each word deliberate.
“You can go back to the countryside and farm. Starting today, no one will ever hire either of you again.”
Their eyes went wide. Their mouths opened and closed, but not a single word came out.
I didn't hesitate. I got in the car and drove. The closer I got to the hospital, the heavier the unease settled in my stomach.
When I reached the door, my feet felt like they'd been poured full of lead. I couldn't lift them.
“The truth is all in here.” The young assistant's face was grim as he handed me a report.
My hands shook as I reached for it. My fingertips were ice-cold, and I could barely keep hold of those few thin pages.
I had braced myself. I had prepared for the worst. But the moment I saw the facts laid out in front of me, my whole body began to tremble.
My baby had been whole. Healthy. Perfect.
And then, after my parents and Elmer came to see him, he was suddenly dead. Suffocated.
I stared at the report until my eyes burned and my blood ran cold.
A lab technician walked over to me, his expression heavy with reluctance.
“The hospital surveillance footage from that window has been deliberately deleted. Every record related to the infant's death has been wiped clean.”
He paused：“But the evidence we do have is more than enough to turn this around for you.”
I raised my head slowly and nodded.
The hatred coiling inside me was so vast it threatened to swallow me whole.
I had clung to the faintest remaining hope for family, for that fragile scrap of belonging, and bent to their every wish because of it.
And in the end, they repaid me by killing my child with their own hands.
The thought hit like ice water in my lungs. I pressed my back flat against the wall and locked my knees, using every ounce of strength I had left just to stay on my feet.
My phone cut through the silence. Elmer.
