Reborn, I Gave My Daughter to His Mistress novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Dollars for Soup

Abigail hands her sick daughter the medicine and nothing more, finds an aneurysm on the scan, calls her old boss and watches the mistress walk through her front door as the new live-in tutor.

At two in the morning, Cora pounded on my bedroom door.

"Mom! My stomach hurts so bad. I think I'm dying!"

Down the hall, Gilbert's snoring never broke.

She was gray in the face and bent in half against the wall.

In my last life, I would have been kneeling on the bathroom floor, holding back her hair and promising her it would pass.

I walked to the medicine cabinet instead.

I handed her the pills she needed and set a glass of water on the counter.

Half an hour later, "Are you hungry, baby?" rose in my throat out of pure habit.

I swallowed it.

"Where's my soup?" Cora croaked from the couch. "The ginger rice one. You always make it."

I sent thirty dollars to her phone.

"If you're hungry, order something."

I went back to my room.

Behind me, her phone smacked the wall.

"Are you serious? Fine! Enjoy your stupid game!"

At eight the next morning I was lying inside an MRI machine.

The neurologist showed me the scan an hour later.

"You have a small aneurysm here. It hasn't ruptured, and that's the good news. With surgery, your outlook is excellent. If you'd waited a few more months..."

He didn't finish.

He didn't need to.

I booked the surgery for six weeks away and sat in my car, laughing until my face was wet.

This time, I would live.

When I opened the front door, a glass vase flew past my head and burst against the wall.

"You didn't wake me up!" Cora screamed. "I had a practice SAT this morning! You did it on purpose so I'd come crawling back!"

The pieces of my grandmother's vase lay across the floor.

"Your alarm is your job," I said. "I told you. I'm done managing your life."

"You're unbelievable." She snatched her bag. "Watch me ace it without you."

The door slammed behind her.

I did not run after her.

Through the window, I watched her cross the lawn with her phone already at her ear.

"Delaney, she did it on purpose," she sobbed. "She's gone completely crazy."

She listened for a moment, and then she laughed through her tears.

I knelt and began picking up the glass.

One shard still held a painted blue cornflower from my grandmother's hand.

I put it in my pocket.

Twenty minutes later, her school counselor called.

"Mrs. Farwell, Cora skipped her practice test today. With the SATs this close..."

"Please call her father from now on," I said. "I'm not handling her schooling anymore."

I texted her Gilbert's number and blocked hers.

Gilbert called before lunch.

"What is wrong with you? You blocked the school counselor? Her mock score dropped a hundred and forty points! I work sixty hours a week to keep this family afloat, and all I ask is that you keep our kid on track!"

I almost laughed.

Gilbert's consulting firm had been losing money for six years.

My trust had covered every shortfall, and he had never asked where the money came from.

"She wanted freedom," I said. "I'm giving it to her. You've always said I was too hard on her. Now nobody screams in this house. Everybody wins."

"You'll regret this," he said, and hung up.

That afternoon, I made the call I had been too scared to make for seventeen years.

"Abby Otis," Simon Fessenden said. His voice was warm and dry and a little amused. "I was starting to think you'd lost my number."

I did, I thought. I died without it.

"Is my old office still empty?"

He paused.

"I never gave it to anyone. Do I want to know why you're asking after seventeen years?"

"I'll tell you Monday. Right now I only need to know if I can still do the job."

"Abby, you could do it asleep. You did, twice, during that merger trial." I heard him smile. "Come in Monday. We'll talk."

That night I was folding laundry when the front door opened.

I heard two sets of footsteps and the click of heels.

Then Cora's voice. It was breathless and happy, and I had not heard her sound like that in two years.

"Oh my God. Delaney?"

I walked into the foyer.

Delaney Radbourne stood beside my husband with two suitcases at her feet.

Her blond hair was blown out smooth, and her smile was warm and perfectly even.

Cora was already hanging on her arm.

"I hope this is all right," Delaney said to me, gently. "I know it's sudden."

It was the first time she had ever spoken to me.

I had only seen her in photographs, and in person she looked kinder than I'd expected.

"Since you've given up on Cora," Gilbert said, "I hired someone who hasn't. Delaney is moving in as her live-in tutor."

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