Chapter 6
Vivian hobbled into the surging traffic, car horns blaring, drivers cursing. Ethan stared at her retreating figure, then bolted after her like a madman. In the river of cars, they clung to each other, locked in an embrace. The car horns around them might as well have been an ode chorus.
From a distance Vivian looked over at Grace, a sly smile curving her lips. Without a sound, she shaped the words: I won.
Grace’s heart had already turned to ash. What did winning or losing matter anymore? Soon she would take Sophie and leave this place where people devoured people.
Blood still trickled from Grace’s brow, but she felt no pain. A kind doctor guided her back inside to treat the wound again. It was as if all her injuries came from the man she had once loved, and all her warmth—from strangers.
On the way home, Sophie blinked up at her, confused and sad. “Mama… why doesn’t Daddy like us anymore? He seems to like Daisy and Daisy’s mommy more. But he’s my daddy.” She didn’t cry, but the grief beyond her age colored her voice. The look in her eyes stabbed at Grace’s heart.
Grace had no answer. “Baby, how about Mommy takes you somewhere where there is no Daddy?”
“Will you leave me there?” Sophie whispered, gripping Grace’s shirt in fright.
Grace’s heart twisted. Ethan’s behavior had stripped Sophie of her sense of safety. Grace pulled her close, as if she could tuck her child into her own bones. “Baby, Mommy will never leave you. Unless one day you grow up and don’t need me anymore.”
“Sophie will never leave Mommy either.”
Once, Ethan had been good to them, too. Before Vivian returned to the country, he’d been a qualified father. Almost every night when he came home from work, he brought a present for Sophie. The gifts filled an entire room. Back then Sophie was also clingy to him. The first words she ever learned to say were “Daddy, Daddy.” Father and daughter were so close that even Grace felt kind of “jealousy.”
Then Vivian came back with Daisy, and Ethan changed as if overnight.
Half a year ago, Grace had come home from preschool pickup with Sophie and opened the door to see Ethan holding a chubby little girl on his lap. Vivian sat pressed against him on the couch, the two of them cooing at the child. They were laughing so hard they doubled over—like a real family.
Sophie saw her own territory on Daddy’s lap taken by another child. Crying, she rushed over and pushed Daisy off Ethan’s lap. That day marked the first time Ethan turned a dark face on Sophie. Grace’s expression went cold as well. “Didn’t you say you had to work late?” she asked him. “Why did you work home?”
Grace knew exactly who Vivian was—Ethan’s first love, his “white moonlight.” She’d went aboard and married a foreigner. Now the white moonlight came back, and of course he couldn’t control himself.
Vivian’s tone went sarcastic. “Ethan, since we’re not welcome here, maybe you should take Daisy and me back to the hotel.”
Ethan’s eyes softened with heartache for Vivian. When he turned to Grace, ice formed in his gaze. “Grace, is this how you treat guests?” he snapped. “Vivian is a very, very good friend of mine.”
As the two adults faced off, Sophie let out a piercing wail. “My dress! My dress!”
Grace followed her pointing finger—and felt her blood boiled. Sophie’s most cherished princess dress, the one Ethan had given her, was clutched in the chubby little girl’s hands. Daisy was yanking at the flowers and lace. Petals and trim littered the floor. The dress was totally ruined.
It had been beautiful—a dress straight out of a little girl’s dreams. Sophie loved it most of all; she only wore it on special occasions. When she wasn’t wearing it, she hung it in the most prominent spot in her closet, just to look at it often. But now there was no going back.
Ethan’s eyes darted away, but he said nothing to stop it. “It’s just a dress. I’ll buy Sophie another one,” he said at last. “And Daisy is still little. She just thinks it’s fun—she didn’t mean it.”
At that, Sophie collapsed against Grace and sobbed. On the way home she had kept saying how much she loved Daddy. And now the Daddy she loved couldn’t spare her a second glance.
From that day on, Vivian and Daisy became the people Ethan cared for most. Time after time he broke promises to his own wife and daughter to accompany them instead. The media caught them together again and again, and the public assumed Vivian was Mrs. Foster. Some outlets even dubbed Ethan a “wife-and-daughter-obsessed maniac.”
Ha. What a joke. The pair in those photos were just the mistress and her child. His real wife and daughter had been shoved out of his mind.
Grace had once offered to divorce, to set him free so he could be with Vivian. Ethan had refused; he claimed he didn’t want Sophie to grow up in a single-parent home. The thought was ridiculous. It was all in the past now, but every time Grace remembered it, a dull ache pressed at her chest.
