After They Stole My Life, Reborn I Called Another Man Dad Chapter 16

After They Stole My Life, Reborn I Called Another Man Dad Chapter 16

There was complete silence inside the room.

Six months later, Ethan was discharged from the hospital.

His right hand had recovered better than the doctors had expected. He could use utensils and write again, but he would never be able to repair cameras with the same precision and flexibility he once

had.

He never reopened his photography studio.

Once the insurance settlement and compensation money came through, we gave up the lease on

our old storefront and moved into an apartment complex not far from the hospital.,

Ethan couldn’t sit still for long.

Before long, he started teaching the elderly people in our neighborhood how to take pictures with simple point–and–shoot film cameras.

He charged five dollars a day.

People still somehow managed to owe him money.

One day, I finally asked him what he was getting out of it.

He answered with a completely straight face.

“Mrs. Lee from the house on the corner gave me a whole rack of barbecue ribs today!”

I had no response to that.

On my nineteenth birthday, Ethan brought out a small box with an unusually secretive expression.

Inside was the little white knitted cap, still burned along one edge, along with the unfinished sticky

note Sarah had left behind.

He looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

“I had someone restore them.”

He turned the sticky note over.

Someone had added several lines of painfully ugly handwriting to the back.

His handwriting.

[Your mom never finished writing it. I’m not going to pretend I know what she would’ve said.)

Underneath it was another sentence.

[But if you ask me why I love you, it’s because you’re Zoe.]

I stared at it for a long time.

My nose started to sting, and my eyes grew hot.

Ethan immediately frowned at me.

“You’re nineteen. Don’t cry.”

I sniffed and shot back, “I’m crying because your handwriting is seriously awful.”

He threw his hands up dramatically.

“Excuse me? Give it back, then!”

I immediately stuffed the note against my chest and glared at him like someone trying to protect the last piece of food on earth.

“In your dreams.”

He laughed.

The Miller family came looking for me several times after that,

Eleanor looked like she had aged years.

Austin no longer carried himself with that same smug sense of entitlement.

Arthur even offered to transfer some of the assets he had originally intended to leave to his

biological daughter to me.

I accepted them.

Not because I suddenly considered myself part of their family.

Not because I had forgiven everything.

That money had been mine to begin with.

I wasn’t going to pretend to be noble just to save them money.

But when they asked about amending my birth certificate, legally changing my last name, and officially returning to the Miller family, I refused every single request.

The last time Eleanor came to see me, she sat on a bench downstairs.

“Zoe,” she asked quietly, “did you really never think about coming back?”

I thought about it for a moment.

“I did.”

Her eyes immediately lit up.

I continued, “The day they first found out who I was. I was terrified my dad would find out I wasn’t his biological daughter and decide he didn’t want me anymore. For a moment, I really did wonder

where I would go if he turned me away.”

Her lips trembled.

“And after that?”

“After that, he chased me all the way to the corner just to make sure I was okay.”

I smiled faintly.

“So there was no ‘after that.“”

She lowered her head and said nothing.

But tears kept falling onto her lap, one after another.

In my previous life, I had asked myself the same question countless times.

What if Chloe had never disappeared?

What if I had never come back?

What if, on that snowy day, the Millers had opened their front door and welcomed me inside?

Would everything have turned out differently?

It took me a long time to understand that a person couldn’t live forever on what–ifs.

Sometimes, one choice was enough to send someone down an entirely different path.

Eleanor had chosen Chloe.

Austin had chosen Chloe.

And the day Ethan learned that I wasn’t his biological daughter, he still chose me.

So there was no reason for any of us to keep looking back.

The following spring, I opened a small photography studio of my own.

On opening day, I set up the camera and had Ethan sit in the middle.

He looked deeply uncomfortable, glancing around the room.

“Why are two grown adults taking a family picture?”

I set the timer and smiled at him.

“Didn’t you always say photographs never got old?”

He clicked his tongue.

He looked thoroughly unimpressed, but he couldn’t stop the smile tugging at the corners of his

mouth.

Just before the shutter went off, I placed the little white knitted cap with its burned edge on the

empty chair beside us.

Not because of who it was supposed to belong to.

Not because I needed to prove whether Sarah had ever loved anyone.

I placed it there because it had been with me for a very long time.

The countdown reached its final second.

Ethan suddenly called my name.

“Zoe.”

“Hmm?”

I had just turned toward him when the shutter clicked.

When the photo was developed, neither of us was looking at the camera.

But we were both smiling.

And the chair beside us was still empty.

It looked strangely similar to that baby picture from nineteen years ago.

But this time, I didn’t feel like anyone was missing.

As for whether the Miller family ever regretted what they had done, or what eventually became of

Chloe, I rarely asked anymore.

After all, in this life, I had never been left to fend for myself.