Chapter 2

I turned and saw my father. He looked exactly as he had been a decade ago.

He looked down at Layla with tender exasperation.

“The doctor said you’re supposed to avoid unhealthy food.”

Layla leaned coquettishly against him. “I only had one little bite. Don’t be so hard on me.”

I quietly glanced at my mother.

She stared at my father with a pale face. He was facing away from her.

When he noticed my mother, his gaze was calm and indifferent. He seemed to be staring at a stranger.

I expected my mother to impulsively rush forward and confront him.

Instead, she silently held five-year-old me tightly in her arms.

After my father left with Layla, my mother wept silently.

She showed me a message on her phone. My father had told her not to make a scene.

I tried to comfort her, but she just kept crying.

“Mom, don’t cry. He’s not worth it.”

That night, my father came to the remote town where my mother lived. She punched and kicked him while crying her heart out.

“Why did you lie to me? What did you take me for?

“Do you have any idea that our daughter has been mocked all these years? They all called her a fatherless child!”

My father silently pulled out a bank card and shoved it into her hand.

“There’s a million dollars in here. Take it. Just don’t make a scene in front of Layla for now.”

Back then, to maintain his poor-man act, my father never transferred more than a thousand dollars to my mother at a time.

Out of the blue, he was suddenly able to send her a million dollars without blinking.

My mother looked at the bank card and scoffed. “Rowan, you’ve been lying to me for ten years, and all I get is a million dollars?

“That’s not what the money’s for. Zoe is about to start elementary school. Haven’t you always wanted to buy a house with a big backyard?

“I’ll figure out the housing situation. But now’s not a good time. Layla’s been watching my every move lately.”

She threw the bank card back at him. “Just leave. Don’t come back.”

“Aileen, calm down. I had my reasons...”

I stood up and shoved my father.

“Get out now. Stop bothering my mom!”

My father was stunned. He demanded my mother, “Who is she? Why is she calling you ‘Mom’?”

My mother did not bother to tell him. She simply pushed and forced him out of the house.

After everything calmed down, she stared out the window at the moonless sky.

“So, every time he lied about going abroad for some operation, he was really taking his wife and daughter on vacation?”

My eyes darkened, and I nodded.

While my mother worried whether he was doing well overseas, he had been watching the snow fall with Layla, sharing a life together.

Everyone in Harbor City’s upper-class society knew how deeply devoted my father was to Layla.

The next day, my mother was supposed to go to work, but she was informed that she had been let go.

She thought about my upcoming tuition fee for the next semester and grew anxious.

She raised her voice and said, “You can’t just fire me for no reason. I’ll sue you!”

Her boss then responded, “Suit yourself. But honestly, Mr. Xanders could fix this with one phone call. You’re just wasting your time.”

My mother had no choice but to return to the rental apartment in utter humiliation.

By then, the landlord had already thrown all her belongings out.

“I’m not renting this place to you anymore. You need to be out today.”

My heart sank.

“Layla must have found out about you. We need to get back to Amity City.”

I knew that because I had traveled back in time, the timeline had been accelerated.

On the outside, Layla did not seem to care that her husband had kept another woman on the side.

In reality, she was extremely jealous. She had been delighted to ruin my mother.

But in her youth, my mother was more stubborn than I had expected. She was not willing to give up Harbor City. She had struggled there for five years.

She checked into a cheap motel and started submitting job applications online.

Every single one was rejected.

Some people even mocked her directly. “Why not just stay as Mr. Xanders’ mistress? Why do you have to go out looking for a job?”

Layla even publicly attacked my mother online. She called my mother a homewrecker and accused her of taking one million dollars from my father.

Netizens followed and insulted her with vicious comments.

My mother fired back defiantly. She attached chat logs with my father in her post to prove that she was not the other woman.

However, those posts were soon flagged as violations and blocked from being shared.

One day, my younger self, Little Zoe, came home from kindergarten, crying.

“Nobody would play with me today. They said you stole Melody’s daddy...”

My mother held Little Zoe tightly and said, “Zoe, this is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

After hitting one dead end after another, she finally decided to leave Harbor City.