"We’re getting divorced! Your capitalist parents have already been sent down to the countryside for reform. Evelyn Shaw, do you really think you’re still some rich young miss from before? Pack your things right now, take that child with the unknown father, and get out!"
Inside a bedroom in a three-story Western-style house in Hangshi, a young man and woman stood arm in arm by the bed, looking coldly at the pale-faced Evelyn Shaw lying there.
Evelyn gritted her teeth and forced her weak body upright. Her eyes were red. She lifted a thin, bloodless finger and pointed at the man in front of her, grief and fury all over her face. "Raymond Mercer! Back then, you were the one kneeling in my family’s courtyard, crying and begging my parents to let you marry into the Shaw family! Now that my family’s fallen, not only do you refuse to help, you even want to drive my daughter and me out. Where’s your conscience?"
She was so worked up that the moment she finished speaking, she broke into a fit of coughing.
Raymond’s face darkened. He pulled a divorce agreement from his pocket and slammed it hard in front of Evelyn. "You were the one fooling around outside and getting yourself pregnant with nowhere to go. I took you in because I pitied you! But all these years, you’ve been cold as ice to me. You wouldn’t even let me touch you. You never once treated me like your husband!"
He was so angry his face had twisted, a nasty look rising in his eyes.
Evelyn’s chest heaved. She hurried to defend herself. "We made it clear from the start. We signed it and pressed our fingerprints. We were only going to be a couple in name and stay out of each other’s private business!"
"Well, I’ve changed my mind!" Raymond snapped. "I’m a man. Why should I keep swallowing this kind of humiliation?"
Seeing that he was truly enraged, the woman beside him quickly tugged at his sleeve and spoke in a soft, timid voice. "Brother Qing, don’t be angry. I’m scared."
The second he heard her voice, more than half of Raymond’s anger died down. He turned and soothed her gently. But when he looked back at Evelyn, his eyes were full of nothing but disgust and impatience. "Evelyn Shaw, if you know what’s good for you, sign it now. Otherwise one day you’ll die in this bed and rot there, and nobody will care."
After saying that, he put an arm around the woman with the coy figure and strode out of the room.
Evelyn stared at their backs as they left. She was furious, but even more hopeless. She had always been weak from birth and sick most of the year. Her body simply could not take a blow like this. Her vision went black, and she fainted straight onto the bed.
The moment she passed out, little Chloe hurried in. She carried a cup of water in one hand and braced herself on the bedside with the other, struggling to lift her short little legs up onto the bed. By the time she finally climbed up, more than half the water had already spilled. The little girl scratched her head in frustration, then quickly fed the rest to Evelyn bit by bit. Only after making sure her mother had swallowed it all did she finally let out a breath.
An hour earlier, Chloe Shaw had regained all her memories. She had transmigrated into a novel set in the 1970s and become the daughter of Evelyn Shaw, a fallen capitalist family’s young lady. Evelyn was beautiful and well-educated, but she had been born sickly. Her body had always been frail, and she spent most of her life ill.
Six years ago, she had been set up and ended up pregnant, without ever finding out who the child’s father was. Her grandfather and grandmother feared she was too weak to survive an abortion, so they had her keep the baby. To protect her reputation, they decided to bring in a live-in husband. Raymond Mercer was the man they found back then. He said his mother was dying and only begged them to save her life. He was willing to work like an ox or a horse for their family.
For six years, he had acted the part well enough. Who would’ve guessed that just days ago, Grandpa and Grandma would get caught up in trouble? On top of that, their family had always been in business, which made their status sensitive. They were sent off to the northwest to plant trees. Her mother couldn’t bear the blow and fell sick. Not only did he refuse to care, he openly brought another woman into the house. And now he even wanted a divorce and to throw the two of them out.
Chloe clenched her chubby little fists tight. This was just too much!
She remembered what the book said. Not long after her mother was driven out, she died. Then Chloe herself also met with disaster and lost her life. Everything in the house ended up in that scumbag father’s hands.
No way. She absolutely could not let that happen. Even though she still couldn’t fully wrap her head around the absurd truth that she had turned into a five-year-old child, the most urgent thing now was saving their lives. She could not let that heartless man get his way.
Chloe put her two small hands together, shut her eyes, and her awareness quickly sank into that miraculous place. A few days after transmigrating, she had discovered the secret. It was a wide stretch of grassland with a clear brook running through the middle. She had taken one sip of that water, and her whole body had instantly felt more refreshed. It had to be the kind of magical water mentioned in other stories.
At the far end of the grass stood a white house. She still hadn’t had time to go inside and look around. All she could think about was hurrying to get more water so her mother’s body could hold on. In her previous life, she had lived in an orphanage until adulthood. She had finally made it into college, only to die in a car accident. She had never known what it felt like to have a mother. But now, looking at the weak woman on the bed, a strange warmth and closeness rose from deep inside her heart.
She kicked hard with her short legs and climbed onto the bed, then used all her strength to feed in a full cup of water. Watching that pale white face finally regain a bit of color, she reached out her soft little hand and gently smoothed the messy strands of hair away.
Mom was really beautiful.
When the person on the bed finally began breathing more steadily, Chloe tried to climb down. But she lost her balance and plopped onto the floor. She rubbed the sore spot, then hurried to the study, took out paper and pen, and wrote a few crooked words.
"Letter of accusation."
This five-year-old body was really hard to control. She could barely even hold the pen steady. Still, she managed to finish the letter in the end.
The whole house was quiet, and only the pattering sound of her feet running downstairs could be heard. She rushed out the door and asked several passersby for directions before finally finding the neighborhood office.
She was just a child. The people at the office would never believe her so easily. So she stopped an elderly woman who was about to go in. Her big dark eyes quickly filled with tears. She told the old woman all the dirty things that scumbag father had done, and she carefully described how her mother had dragged her weak body up just to write this accusation letter. At the very end, she deliberately added one more thing: right now, her father was taking that outside woman to a gold shop to pick out jewelry.
The elderly woman’s eyes reddened from listening. She pulled Chloe into her arms and comforted her for a while, then took the accusation letter from her hand with a face full of anger and turned to go inside.
Only after seeing the woman firmly place the letter into the hands of a worker at the neighborhood office did Chloe finally feel relieved. Then she slowly left.
In times like these, bad conduct between a man and a woman was no small matter. If things got serious, they could be dragged out for public humiliation. It looked like her father and that woman were about to run out of good days.