After Five Years of Lies, I Left the Family and Made Them Regret It Chapter 06

After Five Years of Lies, I Left the Family and Made Them Regret It Chapter 06

For five years, Adrian had never once dared to step inside that room.

Serena froze.

“Evelyn’s gone. There’s no point leaving the room empty.”

She said it with the same casual ease Adrian had used the day before, when he’d said a dead child

couldn’t have a name reserved for them forever.

For the first time, Adrian truly heard how cruel those words were.

He slowly took his hand off the door, but he still didn’t step aside.

“Get out.”

Serena’s face went pale.

“Adrian?”

“Pack your things and get out. All of you.”

Noah burst into tears.

In the past, the moment Noah cried, Adrian would immediately give in.

This time, however, he looked through the half–open door and saw the crib covered in a thick layer

of dust.

Suddenly, he remembered what had happened after we lost our baby.

I had once asked him if we could lock the nursery.

He had said yes.

He had held me in his arms and promised that as long as I was alive, we would still have a family

one day

Later, I learned that I could never have another child

And Adrian had given that promise, that name, and even his place as a father to someone else.

By the third day after I left, I still hadn’t returned to New York.

Adrian began searching everywhere he thought I might be.

He checked Ralph’s Coffee, the rehabilitation centre at the Hospital for Special Surgery, the

children’s department at Macy’s, even Brookfield Place.

No one had seen me.

Eventually, he went to the Hospital for Special Surgery.

A nurse went through my medical records and asked, “And you are to Evelyn Bennett?”

Adrian hesitated.

“Her husband.”

The nurse looked up at him.

“So she does have a husband.”

That was all she said.

But Adrian’s expression changed at once.

The nurse told him that on the day of my third surgery, I had sat alone in the corridor for four hours.

The consent form required confirmation from a family member, so I had kept calling.

By the third time the surgical team came to tell me they couldn’t wait any longer, I finally said

quietly, “You don’t need to wait any longer. I’ll sign it”

After the anaesthetic wore off, I trembled with pain all night.

When I tried to get some water, the cup was out of reach.

I tried to lower myself out of bed while holding on to the rail, but I fell to the floor.

A relative of the patient in the next bed heard the noise and helped me back into bed.

“She did nothing but make excuses for all of you after she woke up.”

The nurse sighed

Adrian lowered his gaze to the date on my medical record.

That day, he had waited outside Serena’s delivery room for thirteen hours.

When Noah was born, Adrian held him in his arms and was overwhelmed by the joy of becoming a

father for the first time.

His phone had vibrated in his pocket again and again.

Serena had clutched his sleeve and cried, begging him not to leave.

He had told her, “All right. I’m staying.”

Then he silenced his phone.

Later, when he finally saw all my missed calls, he sent me only one message.

“It’s only an operation. You’re surrounded by doctors. Stop expecting me to drop everything for

you.”

I replied with a single word.

“Okay.”

After that, I never called him before another surgery again.

Back then, Adrian had taken that “Okay” to mean I was finally being sensible.

Only now did he realise it had been the first time I’d given up on asking him for help.

The nurse took an old rehabilitation plan from the fille.

It had been folded and unfolded so many times that the paper was badly worn.

“There was still a chance another reconstructive operation might help, but she’d have needed

someone with her for at least six months afterwards. She said no one at home could spare the time, so she kept putting it off. Six months ago, she came back and said she wanted to try

treatment in Canada.”

Adrian finally understood.

I hadn’t decided to leave on a sudden impulse.

Those unanswered calls, one after another, had made me start thinking long before I left about what my life would look like afterwards.

On the way back to the Upper East Side, Adrian thought seriously about the past five years for the

first time.

The love he’d once felt for me hadn’t been entirely a lie.

After the crash, he had stayed by my bedside and held me while I broke down, crying with me.