Chapter 1272: Chapter 1267: Tell the Truth!
The air seemed to freeze. Juliana Lancaster was stunned on the spot. She stared at her daughter for quite a while before finally mumbling, disbelief in her voice, "Sophia, what did you just say?"
"I just had surgery." Sophia Hamilton was still looking at Evander Lancaster, her cool eyes devoid of any extra emotion. Evander also stared fixedly at her, both hands tucked into the pockets of his white coat, thin lips pressed together. In that locked gaze between them, Sophia said two words.
"Abortion."
Juliana Lancaster...
It took her a while to react. She grabbed her daughter’s arm and spoke in heartache, "You child, something this big and you didn’t say a word to Mom. Are you trying to scare me to death?"
Sophia lowered her eyes and took a deep breath. Evander did the same, his downcast gaze hiding the emotion in his eyes.
Juliana suddenly turned her head, her face stern as she said, "Evander, something like this happened and you’re not going to give me an explanation?"
Evander lifted his eyes and let out a clearly audible breath. "I’m sorry, Auntie, I didn’t protect Sophia well enough."
"Didn’t protect her?" Juliana repeated, her expression far from pleasant. "If you weren’t ready to have a child, you should’ve taken proper precautions. You’re a doctor—you should know how damaging an abortion is to a woman’s body!"
"I know." Evander dropped his gaze again and nodded. "This time it was an accident. Actually, I was planning to have Sophia keep the baby."
"Keep it?" Juliana shot back, the stern look on her face not easing at all. "Our Sophia is with you without status, without a name. If she gives birth to this child, what do you plan to do? Let people point at her behind her back, mock her child..."
"Mom! Don’t say anymore, we’ve already broken up!" Sophia cut off her mother’s words. Juliana snapped her head back around, her face rarely this harsh. Sophia’s lips moved; she braced herself and said, "That’s why I had the baby aborted."
Juliana Lancaster...
She suddenly nodded. "That might be for the best. We weren’t the same kind of people to begin with." With that, she grabbed Sophia’s hand. "Come on, go home with Mom. If you’re going to break up, then make it clean. Don’t drag it out; it’s bad for everyone."
Seeing Juliana pulling her daughter toward the door, Evander’s hands, tucked in his white-coat pockets, clenched tighter and tighter, but in the end he didn’t have the courage to speak.
As a man, as the child’s father, failing to protect his woman and his child—that was his dereliction of duty. So, he had no right to stop them.
Sophia was wearing Evander’s clothes: lounge pants so long they dragged on the floor, a thin cotton jacket that went past her hips. One hand was held by her mother, the other tugging at the waistband, slippers flapping on her feet. She looked like some kind of psychiatric patient.
Luckily they were in a hospital, so it wasn’t quite as embarrassing.
Back home with her mother, Juliana didn’t scold her too much. What was done was done; even if she blamed her now, it wouldn’t help anything.
She dug out some nutritional supplements—some for building blood, some for conditioning the body. Of course, all of them had been given to her by Evander before. She busied herself on the balcony with a clatter of pots and bottles, and before long came into Sophia’s bedroom with a big bowl in her hands. She sat down sideways on the edge of the bed and scooped up some soup, intending to feed her daughter.
Sophia reached out her hand. "Mom, I’ll do it myself."
Juliana sighed and handed the bowl to her daughter. "Drink it while it’s hot. It’s for building blood."
Sophia cupped the bowl and lowered her head to take a sip. The soup tasted a bit strange—kind of sweet, with a hint of Chinese medicine. It wasn’t a flavor she liked. But with her mother sitting right there, she had no choice but to force it all down.
Juliana took the empty bowl and stood up. She hadn’t even left the bedroom when Sophia already flipped back the quilt, jumped out of bed, and rushed out.
Kneeling in front of the toilet, she threw up all the soup she’d just drunk, and only then did she feel much better. Holding onto the toilet, she stood up and turned around, only to see that at some point, her mother Juliana was already standing at the door.
"Sophia, tell Mom the truth. Did you really have the abortion or not?"
Sophia...
Facing her mother’s stern expression, she guiltily wiped the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand and said weakly, "I did."
"Tell the truth!"
Juliana suddenly raised her voice. The sudden outburst startled Sophia into hunching her shoulders, then she nodded.
"Then how come I haven’t seen you change a sanitary pad?" Juliana hit the nail on the head. As a medical worker and a mother, her mind was sharper than most.
Unlike that foolish man Evander, who knew enough to prepare pads for Sophia but didn’t pay attention to whether she actually used them.
Sophia...
She slowly walked up to her mother, reached out and grabbed her arm, giving it a little shake. "Mom, don’t be mad."
"Don’t be mad? How am I supposed not to be mad? Something this serious and you still kept it from me. If I hadn’t been afraid something might happen to you, were you planning to keep it from me for the rest of my life?"
"Mom—" Sophia pouted and acted cutesy, shaking her mother’s arm again.
Juliana took a deep breath in and let it out, patted her daughter’s hand, and sighed. "Alright, stop trying to act cute. Since you’ve already broken up with Evander, then you should abort the baby. I’ll go to the hospital with you tomorrow."
"No!"
Sophia refused stubbornly, glaring at her mother in grievance, a stubborn light clearly shining in her eyes.
Juliana was helpless. "Then what do you want? You said it yourself—you and Evander have already broken up. Are you really planning to give birth to this child and let them face people’s strange looks from the day they’re born?"
Sophia lowered her gaze. One hand still gripped her mother’s arm; the other rested on her own lower abdomen, gently caressing it as she said, "She’s my flesh and blood. I can’t bear to get rid of her."
"But you’ve already broken up with Evander!" Juliana stated the fact sternly.
"Who says you can’t have the baby just because you’ve broken up?" Sophia retorted, unwilling to back down. After Evander apologized to her, she had softened a bit. After all, he was her first man. Even though he had been overbearing and unreasonable, when she really thought about it, he had treated her pretty well.
Juliana sighed again. "Sophia, tell Mom the truth. Is it that you can’t let go of Evander, or are you planning to be a single mom?"
"What’s so bad about being a single mom? Society’s so open now; it’s not like I’d be the only one."
Sophia guiltily looked away. She knew Evander’s mother disapproved of their relationship, and she’d spent so much effort talking her own mother into agreeing to them being together. Now with this whole mess, her mother probably would never approve of them again.
How could Juliana not see through her daughter’s thoughts? She sighed and flung Sophia’s hand away in exasperation. "I’m not getting involved anymore. You figure it out yourself."
Watching her mother’s retreating back, Sophia blinked and puffed out her cheeks a little, then smiled.
She withdrew her gaze and lowered it to her own lower abdomen, gently rubbing it as she said, "Baby, you’re safe now. From now on, Mommy will be careful."
...
Evander held the report sent over by the lab, his brows tightly knit. The chromosomal similarity between Willow Lancaster and Gabriel Lancaster was under three percent. Before putting the report away, he let out a sigh. It looked like yet another family was about to fall apart.
