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After Rebirth, I Let My Daughter Elope; She Went Mad With Regret
NovelShort
Completed
My daughter fell in love with a petty thug and wanted to break up with her boyfriend, a graduate student, so she could be with the thug. I threatened to kill myself, and in the end she cut things off with him. Her life after marriage was comfortable and well-off. Twenty years later, I lay sick in a hospital bed. My daughter reached over and pulled out my oxygen tube. "All because I didn't come downstairs that day, Ryder drank himself into a wreck and died in a car crash!"
Chapters (4)
第1章
My daughter fell for a small-time thug and wanted to dump her boyfriend, a graduate student, to be with him.
I threatened to kill myself to stop her, and in the end she cut ties with the thug. Her married life was comfortable, wanting for nothing.
Twenty years later, I lay sick in a hospital bed.
My daughter pulled out my oxygen tube with her own hands.
"All because I didn't come down that day, Ryder drank himself sick and died in a car crash!"
"You killed him! You should have paid with your life long ago!"
I wanted to tell my daughter that the thug got drunk to catch another girl's attention, that he'd picked a drinking contest with someone else on purpose.
But I couldn't get a single word out before I stopped breathing.
When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the thug stood downstairs shouting my daughter's name.
My daughter was glaring at me, vicious.
"Don't even think about stopping me this time. I'm going to be with Ryder no matter what!"
Had my daughter been reborn too?
Then this time, I'd let her have exactly the life she wanted.
As long as she never regretted it.
…
Stacy Whitney's eyes were red-rimmed, her voice shaking.
"You keep saying it's for my own good. You just want Garry's money, don't you? You want to ride on me!"
"You don't love me, you're selling me!"
"You want to trade my happiness for your fortune. Keep dreaming!"
The Stacy in front of me blurred into the Stacy who had ripped out my oxygen tube.
I fought down the urge to slap her and unclenched my fist.
She wanted to jump into the fire. Fine, I'd let her.
I slid my hand into my pocket and started the recorder on my phone.
"Stacy, you can be with whoever you want. I won't interfere."
Stacy froze for a second, then let out a contemptuous laugh.
"Good. At least you know better."
She changed her shoes to head out. I stepped in front of her.
Her expression turned nasty.
"I knew you were faking. Everything out of your mouth is worthless!"
"Isn't this where you put on your jumping-off-the-building act? Go ahead! I'll stand right here and watch you jump."
I shook my head. "I'm not trying to stop you. I just haven't finished talking."
Stacy sneered.
"So now you're going to lecture me about consequences, scare me with all the suffering?"
"You just look down on Ryder because he's got no education and did time. People can change!"
I didn't answer her. I took out a formal disownment letter.
"You're free to date whoever you like, I won't interfere. But you have to sign this first. From now on, there's nothing between you and me, nothing between you and this family."
"I won't give you another cent, and I won't look after you anymore."
"Even if one day you can't afford to eat, I won't give you a single grain of rice."
Stacy took the letter, and a flicker of hesitation crossed her eyes.
She dared to throw everything away and fall into that thug's arms only because the family was there to catch her.
That Ryder didn't even have a job. Without me as her safety net, Stacy had no ground under her either.
I pressed her, impatient. "You keep saying you don't care about money. What is it, then? Still can't stomach going hungry with him?"
That line worked. It doubled her urge to defy me.
She laughed, too big for it.
"I was wondering why you dropped the suicide act. So it's money you're using to threaten me into backing down?"
She scrawled her name across the page, then spun around and shoved the letter in my face.
"Fortunes turn. When Ryder and I make it big, don't come crawling back with a smile begging us for anything!"
I put the letter away. "You can go now. Send me your address later and I'll mail your things to you."
Stacy gave a cold laugh, her face saying, Let's see you keep this act going.
She reached for the door. I turned and walked back into the living room.
Stacy froze for a second.
The next second, the front door slammed shut with a bang.
I stood by the window and watched Stacy race down to Ryder below.
The two of them fell into a kiss.
Ryder really wasn't bad-looking, with a hint of that bad-boy swagger.
Stacy was small and pretty, laughing sweetly in his arms.
If I didn't know that in the last life Stacy never went down, that Ryder had his arms around another girl that very night, it would have been a genuinely beautiful sight.
第2章
Stacy lifted her head toward the window, eyes full of defiance.
I pulled the curtain shut.
That night, Stacy updated her feed.
She and Ryder were carrying on at a bar, a crowd of guys and girls gathered around them, cheering them on.
Her neckline was cut low, and in the fifteen-second clip, Ryder's eyes never once left her chest.
Her caption read: : 【I'm giving up everything to run to you.】
But all I saw were three words: throwing herself away.
A call came through on my phone. It was Garry Gilbert.
“Godmother, Stacy says she wants to break up with me. Did I do something wrong, something that made her angry?”
I picked up my glass and took a sip of water.
“Have you seen her feed?”
“She blocked me right after she sent the message. I can't see anything.”
“I'll send it to you.”
I forwarded the video to Garry.
He was quiet for a long time.
“Godmother, this guy doesn't seem like a good person. I have to go save Stacy.”
“Garry, she's not going to turn back.”
“There are plenty of good girls out there. I believe you'll meet someone better.”
Garry was a former student of mine. Good grades, good looks, good family.
After he graduated, he came by my house to visit me, and that was how he met Stacy.
Once the two of them got together, Garry started calling me godmother.
Both of Garry's parents were members of the National Academy of Sciences. Clean money, clean background.
I'd thought this was Stacy's good fortune.
But then she met Ryder, and after a couple of lines from him her head was turned. She said she was sick of a dull life, that she wanted something fresh and exciting.
Fine. Let's see whether she'll be satisfied once she's actually living the "exciting" life.
The next day, Stacy sent me an address in the run-down tenement district.
【Ship my stuff here.】
Rent there ran two hundred a month, all single-room flats.
The toilets were shared outhouses.
Stacy used to think even a public restroom on the street was too filthy to touch. Now she was willing to live a life of emptying a chamber pot every morning.
I packed up her clothes and called a courier.
I sent over the tracking number, and Stacy fired back a message.
【Don't think I don't know what you're up to. I'm only living here for now. Ryder says he'll make money and get me a better place!】
【One day you'll understand what you lost because you looked down on people! You'll grow old with no one to care for you, and I'll be happy for the rest of my life!】
Care for me?
The kind who pulls out my oxygen tube?
No thanks, I really don't need that.
I sent back two words.
【Congratulations.】
Then I turned and went to the hospital for a checkup.
In my last life, when I was hospitalized, there was a nurse a few years younger than Stacy who took the most tender care of me.
She told me she was an orphan, and that being near me felt like being near her mother.
Doing the math, she should be twenty now.
Meeting her early, taking her in as a goddaughter, wouldn't be a bad thing.
I found Sally Dickerson without trouble, and we warmed up to each other quickly.
Back home, Stacy's feed had updated again.
She was holding a cup of homemade juice from some sidewalk stand, calling it the taste of freedom.
I looked at that cheap packaging. Just like her now. Cheap.
Day after day, Stacy posted to her feed.
Eating a spicy hot soup bowl at a street stall with Ryder.
Sneaking into three movies with Ryder without paying.
Riding on the back of a borrowed electric scooter with Ryder.
Every caption the same: fresh, free, exciting.
She seemed to be trying with everything she had to prove to me how wonderful her life was now.
But I remembered: street-stall food used to give her diarrhea.
She used to hand back the change herself whenever a vendor rang her up wrong.
Once, when Garry's Porsche broke down and he borrowed a Honda to pick her up, she said it wasn't good enough for her precious backside.
第3章
Garry saw the screenshots from a friend. That was how he learned what Stacy's life had become.
He came to my house, his voice heavy with reluctance.
"Godmother, Stacy's having a really hard time…"
I raised an eyebrow. "She's enjoying every minute of it."
"Garry, do you know anything about this Ryder?"
He nodded. "A small-time thug. Did a year for a gang brawl."
"That's not what I mean," I said.
"That Ryder sleeps around. There's always some new girl hanging off him, and he's a regular at those seedy foot-massage places."
"I don't like thinking the worst of people, but a man like that would be lucky not to have picked up something, wouldn't he?"
"Stacy's with him now. Doesn't that turn your stomach? Some diseases, once you have them, you carry for life."
Garry listened, and something complicated crossed his face.
Then I pulled up a video.
Stacy was with Ryder and his crowd, guys and girls drenched in beer foam, passing drinks mouth to mouth.
One boy with thick yellow scum on his teeth fed a mouthful to Stacy, and she leaned in laughing to take it.
Stacy still had some shred of shame left. She hadn't posted this one herself.
But if she didn't, someone else would.
I'd come across it on TikTok.
Whatever pity had been in Garry's eyes hardened into disgust.
He lifted a hand to his mouth like he might be sick.
I understood. Anyone who realized the chocolate they'd once eaten was actually a lump of filth would react the same way.
The doorbell rang. It was Sally.
"Godmother, I've been craving your spicy fish stew today."
She spotted Garry on the couch, and her face went red in an instant.
I laughed and patted her shoulder. "Keep my godson company for me. I'll go get the groceries."
Two weeks later, a message came from Stacy.
【Why did you only ship me my clothes? The family money is partly mine too. Split it in half and give me my share!】
I let out a cold laugh.
There it was.
Ryder wasn't with her because she'd cut ties with her family.
He was with her because she could give him money.
I wrote back. 【We've already severed all ties. The family's money has nothing to do with you now.】
Stacy wouldn't let it go. She took me straight to court.
At the pre-trial mediation, she looked utterly sure of herself.
"My dad died when I was ten. Even if Naomi Fox cut off our mother-daughter relationship, I still have a right to inherit his estate!"
After the officials went through the accounts, it came out that when Stacy's father died, the family had a hundred thousand dollars in savings.
I agreed to give Stacy fifty thousand, and we'd be square.
But Stacy wasn't having it.
"What about the house? I have a share in that too!"
I produced the property records.
"The house is my premarital property. We've cut all ties, so you have no right to any part of it."
Stacy pressed the officials, refusing to give up, and when she got her answer she glared at me with pure hatred.
"It's just a run-down house worth a million bucks. I don't want it anyway. Call it the price of your life!"
She snatched up the pen and signed the mediation agreement.
Ryder's eyes were practically glowing beside her.
As Stacy left, she curled up one corner of her mouth at me.
"What good is money? When you're old and stuck in a hospital, the aides go out of their way to abuse people like you, the ones with no kids."
"When you die and there's no one to claim your body, don't you dare regret today's decision!"
I almost said, at least the aides won't pull out my oxygen tube.
I thought better of it and kept my mouth shut.
I didn't want her to know I'd been reborn too.
At least, not yet.
第4章
They had barely stepped out of the courthouse when I saw Ryder take the card right out of Stacy's hand.
After that, Stacy started posting payment screenshots every single day.
Ryder sent her fifty-two dollars, she posted it.
Thirteen dollars and fourteen cents, she posted that too.
It was like she was terrified I might miss them, so she even screenshotted the transfers and sent them straight to me to show off.
【See? My husband treats me so well.】
I just found it funny.
【That fifteen-thousand-dollar card of yours, you handed it to him, didn't you.】
【Fifty-two a day. It'd take eight years to add up to fifteen grand.】
【Are you making a lump-sum deposit and pulling it back out in dribs and drabs?】
Stacy was beside herself.
【This is Ryder's own money. He's just holding my fifteen thousand for me, he hasn't touched it at all!】
I gave a cold laugh. He'd better be.
Little by little, Stacy's posts started thinning out.
The street food, the clubs, all of it vanished.
There were no more of Ryder's transfers, either.
On TikTok, my feed served me a clip of Ryder drinking and messing around with a whole crowd of guys and girls.
No Stacy.
Ryder was pressed up tight against one girl, all over her.
I recognized her at a glance. She was the same girl Ryder had brawled over in my last life. Gigi.
Stacy put up a new post.
【A little homewrecker never understands what boundaries mean!】
Maybe she was afraid I'd enjoy the show, because that one disappeared fast.
Early the next morning, she posted a new one.
The photo was breakfast pudding and fried dough sticks.
【My husband was out all night and still remembered to bring me breakfast. It's so nice to be loved.】
I looked at the cilantro floating on top of the pudding and laughed out loud.
Stacy didn't eat cilantro. I remembered that. Garry remembered that.
Whenever we bought food for her, we always said the same thing: no cilantro.
Now here she was, tasting love in a bowl of pudding buried in cilantro.
Well. People's tastes always change.
I supposed that after a stretch with someone like Garry, tall and rich and good-looking, you'd bound to want to try a street thug just to see how the other half tasted.
Garry and Sally were getting engaged.
I went with them to pick out rings, and outside the mall I saw Ryder with his arm around Gigi.
Gigi had a BV bag hanging off her arm.
Ryder pinched her cheek. "You booked a room and hit me for a two-thousand-dollar bag. How many times do I have to sleep with you before I break even?"
Gigi giggled and kissed him on the cheek.
Garry frowned.
"Godmother, do you want to step in?"
My voice didn't so much as ripple.
"Stacy chose this road herself. She can carry it herself."
We were about to go when a familiar voice reached my ears.
"You shameless little slut, who told you to seduce my boyfriend!"
"Take a good look at yourself. Are you even worth it?"
I turned and saw Stacy jumping out of a taxi.
In my last life it had been this same day. She'd had her hair set in loose, lazy waves, wearing a custom Dior suit, coming to pick out an engagement ring.
Back then she'd taken a liking to a ring worth two hundred sixty thousand, and Garry hadn't so much as blinked before swiping his card for it.
The woman here now was another thing entirely, hair everywhere, cursing, like some screeching harpy.
Her eyes were red and bulging, and she swung her fists as she charged at Gigi.
Ryder shoved Gigi behind him and kicked Stacy away.
"The hell are you throwing a fit for? You lay one finger on her, I dare you."
"I've told you we're done a hundred times over. You keep clinging to me anyway. Got no shame at all?"
"Go home, pack your crap, and get lost!"
Ryder's kick knocked Stacy to the ground. She scrambled up, teeth bared, and threw a punch at him.
Ryder raised his hand to slap her. Stacy jerked her head aside, and her gaze swept across to where we were standing.
Her fist froze in midair, and Ryder's palm landed hard across her face.