Chapter 413: A Mother’s Struggle (part 2)
That evening was unusually still in the Edwood family’s small living room. The lamps cast a soft glow over the old sofa and faded curtain, making the space look warm. Yet for Flora, the air felt heavy, everything seemed colourless and cold.
She sat stiffly beside her son, Darcy. Her hands were twisting together in her lap, not knowing how to break the news to him.
"I got a call... today," Flora said, voice shaky. "From the hospital."
Darcy turned toward her, brows furrowing in mild concern. "Is it about the bill? Because if it is, don’t worry. I can take an extra shift at the bar or maybe tutor more students. I’ll figure something out."
"No." Flora shook her head quickly. "No. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t about my illness either," she said and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. "It was about something that happened nearly twenty years ago..."
Darcy’s forehead wrinkled, the lines between his brows deepening. He couldn’t even guess what this was about. "And?"
Flora opened her mouth, but no sound came out at first. Her throat tightened, and before she could force the words, tears fell. One by one. They spilled down her cheeks in a sudden downpour.
"Mum? Why are you crying? What is it? What happened?" Darcy said, quickly scrambling to his feet, pulling out a napkin. He pressed it gently into her trembling hands.
"Mm... they found out a nurse... oh god... my son." Flora couldn’t finish it. Her shoulders shook with each sob. She reached out and wrapped her arms around Darcy, hugging him tightly. "That there is a possibility..." she gasped. "You are not..."
Darcy was confused as he embraced his trembling mother. "What?"
"You...you are not my son," Flora choked, her words muffled but clear enough to shatter everything.
Darcy’s body stiffened. Blood drained from his face. A chill spread through him, icy and merciless, until his fingertips felt numb.
He couldn’t speak. His tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, but no sound emerged.
Flora only held him tighter, her words tumbling out in a stream of guilt and brokenness. "Mum is sorry... if I had been more alert back then... If I had looked closely, I might have realised at the hospital... I should have known. I should have realised something was wrong." She didn’t know what she was saying; the thought of her failure as a mother was crushing her heart.
How could she not recognise her son at the hospital? How could she bring someone else’s son home? If she were sharper... maybe she would have noticed something. But she was too tired after the delivery. She hadn’t even gotten a good look at her baby before exhaustion took over. When they gave her Darcy, she didn’t think much of his dark hair. She knew the hair would fall down and he would grow another set. Even his eye colour, being dark, didn’t raise a question. Most babies’ eye colours would change by growing up. So by the time Darcy’s look turned into a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy, two years had passed. She and her husband thought Darcy had inherited it from their ancestors.
But the reality was something else. Flora could see that every year Darcy got older, the resemblance got lower. He wasn’t like them. He was too clever, too competent, too good, and too perfect. His temperament was so different. Yet she never liked him less. He was her son. She had raised him. The doubt was buried somewhere in the back of her mind.
"I’m sorry," she whispered, almost inaudibly.
Darcy’s chest heaved. Finally, his voice broke free, raw and jagged. "How are they sure? How are you sure?"
Flora leaned back slowly. She reached down to the coffee table where a plain folder lay, edges bent from her nervous handling. With shaking fingers. She pushed it toward him. "I ... I did a paternity test with you... of course, I didn’t believe it at first. But they demanded one. So I took your toothbrush and did it to shut their mouth. But when the result came back like this..."
Darcy slid out the paper, his eyes scanning the bold, merciless numbers.
The 0% result stamped on the paternity test was glaring at him. His heart dropped. It was like suddenly all of his life had been erased. The world he believed in was taken away from him.
"How could this be?" he mumbled under his breath.
Flora leaned forward and seized him again, pulling his rigid frame into her embrace. "I don’t care about the result." She cried against his shoulder. "You are my son. Do you hear me?"
Darcy’s throat bobbed up and down, his breath shallow and uneven. His mother’s words wrapped around his heart like a fragile bandage, warm but unable to stop the bleeding inside.
It was a shock to him. His voice cracked when he spoke. "Mum..."
"This won’t change anything. Whatever you decide, whatever you want to do, Mum stands by you." Flora said firmly. Her tear-streaked face hovered close to his.
Darcy’s eyes searched her, filled with confusion. "What do you mean? Decide what?"
Flora inhaled quickly, her chest rising and falling. "If you want to find your biological parents, I won’t oppose..."
"My biological parents?" Darcy repeated the words foreign on his tongue. His mind was too chaotic. He couldn’t even think there would be a mother and father, strangers, out there searching for him.
Flora raised her hands and cupped Darcy’s cheeks, her grip warm but desperate. "Yes. And if you don’t... if you want nothing to do with them, that’s fine too. Nothing will ever change what we are," her voice broke into a whisper. "You are still my son."
Flora uttered those words, praying Darcy would choose that. She didn’t want to see the heartbroken look in his eyes when he learned the truth. That Micah, the person he loved, was the one replacing him. Why on earth was the world this cruel to them?