The Price of a Stolen Marriage Chapter 07
Chapter 7 Nothing Was Ever Yours
Benjamin’s voice was so hoarse it barely sounded human.
“Mr. Ashcroft, what do you want?”
“I want to see you. I want to meet you. I want to see what the daughter your mother raised looks like.”
“You already did yesterday. I was the one on stage.”
Silence filled the other end of the line.
“I… I couldn’t see you clearly. I have face blindness… you know that. I can’t recognize people’s faces.”
“Maybe you can’t recognize faces, but you can recognize what’s in someone’s heart. Forty years ago, if you’d asked just one more question, if you’d asked whether my mother was telling the truth, you never would’ve driven her away.
“But you didn’t. You believed everyone else.
“You chose the woman who could benefit you. My mother had nothing, so she was the one who got cast aside.”
“Sera… It wasn’t like that…”
“Don’t call me Sera. You haven’t earned that.”
I hung up.
Natalie came to see me three days later.
She kneeled outside the Wellington estate, wearing a wrinkled sweater. Her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. There was no makeup on her face. The dark circles under her eyes looked like she had been punched twice.
“Mrs. Wellington… please… I really didn’t know. I didn’t know any of it…”
I stood in the doorway and looked at her. “What didn’t you know? That your grandmother schemed her way into the Ashcroft family? Or what your grandfather did back then?”
“I didn’t know… I really didn’t… I just wanted to marry Chris. I love him…”
“You love him? You were with him for two years, and you never even cared who his mother was. You thought a woman with no family connections didn’t deserve to marry into the Wellington family, and certainly wasn’t good enough for the Ashcroft family or for you.”
“I never-”
“You did. The first day you came to my house, you told me that a woman from out of town with no family connections was lucky to have married into the wealthy Wellington family.
“You even said that without the Wellington family, I’d have nothing left. Your grandmother taught you to say those things, didn’t she?”
She lowered her head and said nothing.
“Do you know what your grandmother told my mother all those years ago? That she was just a maid’s daughter
and should never try to marry into a wealthy family.
“Does that sound familiar? It’s almost exactly what you said to me that day.”
Natalie’s shoulders trembled.
“Everyone in your family is the same deep down. You look down on poor people. You look down on anyone without connections. You think the whole world should step aside for you. But do you know why you’ve lived such a comfortable life? Because your grandmother stole my mother’s life.
“Every piece of clothing you’ve worn, every meal you’ve eaten, every dollar you’ve spent… all of it came from what was stolen.”
She looked up, tears streaming down her face. “Mrs. Wellington, please… don’t drive me away. Chris is all I have left. My family’s finished. I don’t have anything anymore…”
“Of course you don’t. Because nothing you had was ever yours to begin with.”
The door closed. Behind me, I could still hear her crying, but I never looked back.
