Chapter 11
My son said nothing and quietly returned to his room.
My daughter, frightened, her eyes turning red, clung tightly to Simeon and refused to let go.
I took my daughter back to her room. “Ramon, during the time our daughter was hospitalized, did you visit her even once?”
“Did you ever ask how badly she was hurt, or how her recovery after the surgery was going?”
Ramon’s lips moved, but he couldn’t utter a word.
“I know it was only the third floor… I never meant to let our daughter fall, it was just an accident…”
I laughed. “Did you ever consider that your so–called accident could have cost our daughter her life?!”
“It was the third floor–when Brittany fell, she broke her leg, and our daughter is so much younger!”
“You should leave. I could never let someone who disregards a child’s life stay by my side as their father.”
Ramon looked at his daughter inside the room. Just as he was about to take a step forward, she timidly shrank away from him.
Only then did Ramon realize that over the years, he had not only hurt
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me, but had also inflicted deep psychological wounds on the children.
He saw the terror in our daughter’s eyes, remembered the moment he dangled her outside the balcony, recalled her bloody and battered body after the fall, and the sight of her covered in injuries in the hospital. His heart ached as if it were being torn apart.
But no matter how much it hurt, he still couldn’t bear to let go.
After that night, Ramon tried to find me many times, both openly and
in secret.
He watched as I lived a happy life with our son and daughter, and saw Simeon often bringing fruit and snacks to our home.
He saw the children rush excitedly into Simeon’s arms, showing no fear at all toward him, their biological father.
Ramon was filled with regret.
On Children’s Day, Ramon tried to make amends by buying new toys and a cake for our son and daughter.
Simeon and I had just returned from the amusement park with the children.
Ramon, trying to please them, offered the toys, but our son, holding the new Transformer Simeon had bought, didn’t even glance at him. “Uncle Simeon already got this for me.”
Embarrassed, he handed the cake to our daughter, but she turned her face away and refused to take a single bite.
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“Take your things back. They don’t need your belated charity.”
When the children needed Ramon most, all they received was pain. Now, just like me, they were completely disappointed in him.
Ramon didn’t persist any longer. He signed the papers and transferred all the money in his account to me.
He drowned his sorrows in alcohol every day, shunned by everyone.
Later, he truly developed post–traumatic prosopagnosia.
He couldn’t recognize anyone, and would often call out “Gabby” to strangers.
Every day, he would go to the old neighborhood where we used to live, sit on a bench holding our wedding photo, and repeat over and over, “Gabby, I was wrong, please come back.”
Even the passing neighbors wouldn’t give him a kind look.
He would go to the entrance of the kindergarten our son used to attend, watching the children inside, tears streaming down his face as he realized he had never once picked up or dropped off his son.
He even once mistook another man’s wife for me after failing to recognize people, and was beaten up by her husband and taken to the detention center.
I lived a peaceful and happy life with the children and Simeon.
My daughter’s leg recovered very well, and under Ernest’s strict guidance, she was left with almost no aftereffects.
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Simeon treated me and the children with great care, gentle, attentive, and considerate in every way.
On a sunny afternoon, Simeon knelt on one knee with a ring in his hand: “Gabby, I know I can never replace the children’s biological father, but I am willing to spend my whole life loving you, taking care of you and the children. Will you give me a chance?”
Looking at the children smiling brightly beside me, and at the gentle, steadfast man before me, tears welled up in my eyes as I nodded firmly.
The sun was shining, the breeze was gentle, all the pain was behind us, and the days ahead were filled with hope and warmth.
The end.
