The Daughter He Abandoned Called Him A Stranger Chapter 03

The Daughter He Abandoned Called Him A Stranger Chapter 03

I sighed and stopped there.

Claire could not help asking softly, “Mom… so he regretted marrying you? He started being ashamed of you?”

I looked down with a faint, bitter smile.

“He got busier and busier. He came home later and later. Even when he was home, he was quieter than before.”

“He stopped taking me to events where Mrs. Whitmore was supposed to appear. His excuse was that you were still little and I needed rest.”

“But I knew the truth. He thought I wasn’t good enough to be seen beside him anymore.”

I looked down at the last family photo on the coffee table.

The memory pulled me back to the most painful year of my life.

The love Nathaniel had once fought so hard for had finally begun to wear down under the weight of real life.

“What truly sent our marriage into a free fall was Chloe Lancaster’s return when you were three.”

After twenty years, I could finally say that name calmly.

Chloe was the kind of woman that world had always been built for: Nathaniel’s childhood friend, and the woman both families had once expected him to marry.

The Lancaster and Whitmore families had been close for generations, and by every standard that mattered to their world, Chloe and Nathaniel were considered a perfect match.

Back then, Nathaniel had defied both families for me and broken off the match they had planned for him.

When we got married, Chloe left the country in anger.

When our daughter was three, she came back.

The news arrived while Nathaniel was reading picture books with our daughter.

After he hung up, he sat there for a moment before mentioning it as if it were nothing. “Chloe is back. I’m going to her welcome-back dinner tonight.”

For some reason, my stomach dropped, and unease tightened around me.

Almost without thinking, I said, “I’ll go with you.”

Nathaniel looked at me in surprise, but in the end, he nodded. “All right.”

That day, I took our daughter back to the Whitmore estate.

Then I searched through my closet and found my most expensive dress, a birthday gift Nathaniel had given me the year before. It was so glamorous and formal that I had never found a reason to wear it.

But when I walked into that private dining room with my makeup carefully done and my arm linked through Nathaniel’s, I saw Chloe. In that instant, all my effort became a joke.

She wore a simple silk dress and barely any makeup.

A single diamond necklace rested at her throat, glowing with quiet brilliance.

She stood there with a wineglass in hand, chatting and laughing with the others, effortless, relaxed, and radiant.

It was the kind of poise and confidence that came from growing up surrounded by wealth and love. No matter how hard I tried to imitate it, I could never quite reach it.

Worlds apart.

Those were the only words left in my mind.

And Nathaniel, who had been distracted ever since taking that phone call, visibly lit up the instant he saw Chloe.

It was a look I had not seen in his eyes for a very long time. There was admiration in it, nostalgia, and even the faintest trace of longing.

Their friends crowded around, and the atmosphere quickly grew lively.

Someone teased Chloe with a laugh. “Chloe, after all those years overseas, you didn’t find yourself some handsome foreign guy? Don’t tell me you still had Nathaniel tucked away in your heart.”

Another person chimed in. “Exactly. Nathaniel got married and you were so heartbroken you ran halfway across the world. Now that you’re back, don’t tell us you were saving yourself for him all along.”

Suggestive laughter rippled through the room.

Chloe neither admitted nor denied it.

She only gave him a playful, scolding look. Then her gaze drifted over Nathaniel as if by accident.

And Nathaniel did not immediately deny it or shut it down the way he once would have.

He simply held his wineglass and looked back at Chloe, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth, silently allowing the flirtation to continue.

The easy understanding between them, the quiet intimacy that seemed to shut everyone else out, cut into me again and again.

All the hurt, anxiety, and anger I had held in all night finally broke through.

I set my glass down hard and cut into their laughter with a sharp voice. “Enough! What the hell are you all talking about?”

The private room fell silent at once.

Everyone stared at me in stunned disbelief.

Nathaniel’s expression hardened at once. He grabbed my wrist so hard it hurt and dragged me out of the room with almost brutal force.

At the end of the hallway, he flung my hand away, his eyes cold and filled with disgust.

“Evelyn Hart, what the hell is wrong with you? Haven’t you embarrassed me enough?”

“Embarrassed you?” My voice trembled, and tears rushed up despite my best efforts. “Did you hear what they were saying? Did you see the way you looked at her? What am I supposed to be to you?”

“You’re impossible!” he snapped, the vein at his temple throbbing.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was resentment that had been building for far too long. The words burst out of him before he could take them back.

“Yes, I regret it! Sometimes I really wonder if things would have been easier if I had listened to my family and married Chloe.”

“At least she wouldn’t humiliate me in front of all my friends the way you do.”

I looked at that handsome face, twisted with anger, and suddenly felt as if I were staring at a stranger.

I could not say another word.

I turned and stumbled out of the private club.