“Mom, can you divorce Dad?”
It was nine at night. She was sitting by her son’s bed, coaxing him to sleep. Just when she thought he was finally drifting off, he suddenly dropped that question.
One short sentence.
It hit her like a punch, and for a long moment she couldn’t even react. Even the hand patting his back froze in midair.
A sharp sting pricked her chest without warning.
All these years, things between her and Marcus Ashford had been pretty good.
Logically speaking, a child raised in a home where he was loved should feel happy, right? Safe. Warm. Like life was good.
But...
Why would he think something like that?
She couldn’t make sense of it, but she still kept her voice gentle and asked softly, “Why would you say that?”
Her tone was as mild as possible.
She was afraid that if she sounded even a little too serious, she might scare him.
“Because you never let me eat KFC... and you never let me have ice cream...”
He was already half-asleep, his words slurring together, his voice small and fuzzy with that childish softness only kids his age had.
She honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
So just because of those tiny, random little things, he wanted her to divorce his dad...
A kid’s world really was that simple. No filters, no layers, just pure straight-line logic.
She listened as his breathing slowly evened out, light and steady, and knew he had fallen asleep. She was just about to get up and leave when—
Ding.
A notification sound came from the direction of his bedside.
She turned around.
There was a glow coming from under his pillow.
She lifted one corner of it, and sure enough, a tablet was tucked underneath.
She let out a quiet sigh.
Leo was still little. She’d always worried that too much screen time would mess up his eyesight, so she’d been strict about how long he could use any electronic device each day.
He complained about it all the time, muttering and pouting like the world had ended, but in the end he always followed her rules.
She never expected that tonight, of all nights, he would secretly hide the tablet.
She pulled it out without thinking. She was about to power it off, but before she could, a group chat lit up on the screen and hit her completely off guard.
Group name: Happy Little Family ^_^
One look, and she knew that had to be Leo’s style. That smiley face was his favorite thing to use.
The group icon looked like a family photo of four.
Her fingers paused. Then she zoomed in on the profile picture.
The woman in the photo looked bright and open, all sunshine and ease, with two children in her arms.
One of them was her son, Leo Ashford. He was holding a huge ice cream cone, grinning from ear to ear, the kind of happy that didn’t need faking.
And her husband, Marcus Ashford, was standing right behind that woman.
He was looking at her with a soft, lingering tenderness in his eyes.
The same look he used to give her back when they had first fallen in love.
A sharp pain pierced her chest, sudden and vicious, like a needle going straight through her heart. But even so, her eyes still dragged themselves, almost against her will, to the woman’s name.
In the group, Leo had saved her contact as Mom.
Her whole body went cold, like she’d been struck by lightning.
With trembling fingers, she tapped open the woman’s profile.
Right there on the screen, her nickname was: Pei’s Bright Moon.
Bright Moon...
Irene Norwood? Marcus Ashford’s first love?!
For a second, it felt so unreal she honestly wondered if she was dreaming.
Her husband and her son had built a family group chat with his first love and her child.
And she was the only one left out.
They had made a new home with someone else.
It felt like an invisible hand had clamped down on her heart so hard she could barely breathe.
The chat history was so packed her mind almost stopped working. Her fingers had gone numb, but she still kept scrolling up, one message after another...
Actually, the three of them had a small family group too.
But other than the occasional message from her asking Marcus Ashford when he was coming home for dinner, that group had been dead silent, like it barely even existed.
Then, all of a sudden, “Mom” dropped a video into the chat.
Her hand shook as she tapped it open.
One look and it was obvious the video had been carefully edited.
...
In barely a minute, scene after scene flashed by.
Fried chicken. Cola. A Ferris wheel. A carousel...
Leo Ashford’s little face was bursting with pure, reckless joy.
Even Marcus Ashford, who was usually so stingy with his emotions, slowly stopped hiding the softness in his eyes, the indulgence, the pampering...
As for the other two people in the frame, she didn’t even have the bandwidth to care anymore.
Because the footage began to slow, bit by bit, until at last it froze on Leo Ashford’s small face.
He had his eyes shut tight, little hands clenched together, making a wish at a huge birthday cake with a seriousness that didn’t match his age at all.
Then she heard his soft, childish voice, so sincere it felt like a knife.
"I wish Aunt Irene could be my mom."
"I wish the four of us could stay together forever!"
Applause broke out right away.
Irene Norwood clapped with her child beside her, smiling as they cheered him on, like they were sending his wish straight into the universe.
And Marcus Ashford?
He was smiling too.
The whole scene looked ridiculously perfect, like some picture-book happy family.
Then...
What about her?
The pain hit so hard she could barely breathe.
A new voice message popped up in the group from "Mom."
Her voice was bright and sweet, lively in that effortless way, like some understanding big sister who would always, always take Leo Ashford’s side.
"Baby, you told me before that you wanted me to be your mommy."
"You even said that as long as it wasn’t your current mom, anyone else would be fine."
"I kept wondering why you disliked your mom that much."
"But later I found out. It’s because your mom is way too controlling. She won’t let you eat what you want, won’t let you play how you want."
"So for your sake, so you can grow up happy, from now on, in this group, I’ll be your new mommy."
"This group is our home. Just the four of us."
Was that so?
Anyone would do.
As long as I wasn’t his mother. Was that all he wanted?
Word by word.
She replayed those lines again and again, almost like she was torturing herself on purpose. And still, she couldn’t make herself believe it. The child she had carried, the child she had raised so carefully...
The child she had poured all her heart and energy into actually hated her this much.
Her eyes were shut tight, but the tears still kept slipping down, one after another, impossible to stop.
Leo Ashford had always had a weak stomach. If he ate even a little of the wrong thing, his stomach would act up right away.
When he was very small, he had even been hospitalized several times for gastroenteritis.
So all these years, she had been strict about what he ate, planning his meals every single day, mixing and matching everything with care, just hoping to help his body slowly recover...
But all the effort she made for him—
when it came out of his mouth, it had somehow turned into one thing after another...
evidence that she had hurt him.
No wonder. No wonder Leo’s stomach problems had started flaring up again lately.
She had been so anxious she was going out of her mind, searching everywhere for the reason, and in the end, this was the truth.
Numb all over, she kept listening to the voice messages Leo had sent earlier.
Every audio clip where he complained about her felt like a sharp knife, stabbing straight into her chest.
It was so painful she could barely breathe.
After that, Leo suddenly stopped talking.
She knew why.
It was because she had gone into his bedroom to coax him to sleep.
He couldn’t let her know he was still secretly using the tablet. Even if he still wanted to keep chatting with Irene Norwood in the group, he could only play along with her.
Now, he was already asleep.
She bit down hard on her lip, tears streaming nonstop as she stared at him.
The child looked soft and flawless, delicate like a doll carved out of sugar.
At his age, he didn’t know how to scheme. Whatever he felt, he just said it straight out.
But...
Lies usually didn’t cut that deep. The truth did. Clean and brutal.
She had always thought that as his mother, even if she was stricter with him and he found her annoying right now, one day, when he grew up, he would understand. He would know she had only ever done it for his own good.
But no matter how she thought about it, she never could have imagined he would dislike her this much.
The sadness and anger inside her surged up so hard she could barely hold them down.
Even so, she hadn’t completely lost her mind. She knew...
Leo Ashford was still just a child, basically a blank sheet of paper. He didn’t understand much. He didn’t really know what was what.
So if he rejected her this strongly, and liked Irene Norwood that much...
Then there was only one possible reason.
Her husband, Marcus Ashford.
