Twelve Years Of Salvation, Six Months Of Betrayal Chapter 09

Twelve Years Of Salvation, Six Months Of Betrayal Chapter 09

It was Sophia.

She was wearing a faded old coat. Her hair was a mess, her face sallow. All the polish and smugness from before was gone.

The moment she saw me, she dropped to her knees right there on the sidewalk in front of everyone.

People from my office and passersby stopped to stare.

“Emily! Please, you have to help me!” She wailed, reaching for my pant leg.

I stepped back, avoiding her.

“James cut us off! He gave you all his money! And Margaret’s kidney failure got worse. She’s in the ICU, and the bills are piling up.”

Tears streamed down her face as she cried, completely undone.

“Lucas is sick too. Emily, I know you have all that money. You were always so kind. Please, just give me a little. Even as charity. We won’t survive otherwise!”

The crowd murmured.

“Sophia. You need money for the medical bills, is that right?” I spoke softly, but my words carried

across the quiet street.

She nodded frantically, hope flickering in her eyes. “Yes! Just give me something, and I’ll be your

servant for life!”

I ignored her vows. I raised my voice a little, looking around at the people watching.

“Let me ask all of you something.”

I kept my tone steady, as though narrating a story that wasn’t mine.

“If a woman pretended to get drunk and climbed into your husband’s bed, drugged him, and had his

child. For four years, she schemed to drive a wedge between you and your husband.”

“She showed up at your house and used your worst trauma to humiliate you. Because of her lies, your husband hurt you so badly that you miscarried and lost the ability to ever have children.”

“Now that woman has been exposed and thrown out. She comes begging for money to cover her

debts.”

I looked at the faces that had been full of pity moments ago.

“Would you give your money to the person who destroyed your life?”

The crowd went dead silent.

The looks on their faces changed from sympathy to undisguised contempt and disgust.

Sophia’s face turned the color of ash.

She hadn’t expected me to expose her lies in front of everyone.

“No! That’s not true! You’re lying!” She shrieked, her voice shrill and unconvincing.

“If it’s not true, go ask James yourself,” I said, done with her.

“The Harrisons’ problems aren’t my concern anymore. And you, Sophia, enjoy the consequences of

your own choices.”

I walked around her and headed for the subway.

Behind me, I heard Sophia wailing behind me and the murmurs of the crowd.

Later, I heard that Margaret didn’t make it. She died in the hospital.

Sophia got caught up in some fraud scheme and was deep in debt to loan sharks. She ran off with the

boy in the middle of the night. No one knew where.

As for James, during a mudslide rescue in some remote mountain area, a boulder crushed his leg

while he was trying to save a child.

He might never work on a rescue team again.

I heard all of this while I was on my balcony, watering a new fern.

The sun warmed my back, and water droplets glistened on the fern’s leaves.

When a mutual friend told me, I just said, “Oh. Is that so?”

Then I hung up.

I didn’t care whether these things reached me by chance or design.

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A few years later, my company transferred me to a southern city, where the climate was mild and life moved at a gentler pace.

One weekend afternoon, I took my daughter to the play area at the mall.

I met her while volunteering at a foster center.

She came from a broken home and was shy and quiet, yet each time she saw me, she would timidly offer me a piece of candy.

I went through the adoption process.

She called me Mom. I gave her a home.

I sat on a bench just outside the playground, a warm cup of milk tea in my hands.

“Emily.”

A voice came from beside me, both familiar and strange.