Chapter 154

Chapter 154

She couldn’t react for a moment to the affair she witnessed so suddenly. She didn’t know if it was a one-night stand or something that had been happening for a while now.

She recalled her stay at the Bell’s mansion last time when Raymond yelled at a servant, saying:

“Didn’t I tell you to bring me the letters first?!”

The memory of his infidelity made her think that this affair might have been going on for a long time already.

How should she tell this to Dixie? Eyebrows furrowed, Deatrice was about to turn around and leave when she heard a thud on the stairs.

She looked up and saw the person in question sitting helplessly on the railing. Her face was pale. She must have seen everything.

“Dixie,” Deatrice called out her name in a sympathetic tone.

At that moment Dixie turned to her, she stared at Deatrice with unbearable contempt, anger, and misery on her tear-stained face. Soon, she stood up and swiftly climbed the steps.

Deatrice, who hesitated for a moment, soon followed Dixie up the steps. The woman was now pregnant. She had just fallen and witnessed something terrible. Deatrice just couldn’t let her be.

“Don’t follow me!” Dixie shouted as she ran up the stairs and through the hallway.

People glanced at the two, one chasing the other.

Dixie ran in a chaotic manner and bumped her shin on a chair that blocked her path. She went up one more flight of stairs and entered the attic that was used as a storage room then shut the door behind her.

When Deatrice stood in front of the closed room, she could hear weak cries and gasping breaths emanating from the inside. Judging by how the door didn’t slide open when she pushed against it and whimpers could be heard vividly at this distance, her back was probably against the door.

“Dixie, open the door.” Deatrice leaned against the wood and bent her knees, whispering softly, “Dixie…”

Inside, the muted sobs turned into crying, but Deatrice could tell she was trying to stamp down those tears to maintain some form of her dignity.

“If you have any ounce of respect for me, just go,” she heard the other woman say.

“I know you want to be alone and that our friendship is not deep enough for me to intervene in these matters. But you have to think of your child.”

“Do you honestly believe I’m going to think of that man’s child at this moment?” A voice filled with suppressed anger rang out ferociously.

“I know,” Deatrice spoke softly like she was comforting a wounded beast. “But if the child is in danger, you’ll be in danger too. Dixie, I’m worried about you.”

There was no answer for a long time. Then, the weight in front of the door disappeared. Deatrice put her hand on the knob for a moment and carefully turned it around.

The attic, where a lot of unused items were all piled up, was narrow and dark. She somehow managed to spot a matchbox and lit up the candle beside it. As the room was illuminated with the fire’s orange hue, Deatrice saw her sitting on top of a wooden chest.

Dixie leaned forward as far as her full stomach would allow, her hands covering her face. Her exquisite blue dress had become dusty, one of her gloves was missing, and her wedding ring was on the floor.

“You might think I’m being punished for bullying you, but life isn’t so simple as to reward and punish according to one’s actions. It always finds ways to torture you unexpectedly regardless of how much of a saint you’ve been,” she looked towards the side, her palms clasped on top of her thighs. “So this has nothing to do with you.”

“I know.”

Deatrice carefully sat in front of Dixie.

The latter said nothing as she wiped her tears and tried to hold back her trembling lips. But soon, against her will, tears flowed again and Deatrice silently handed her a handkerchief. Dixie accepted it and wiped the liquid off her face.

Silence fell upon the two, aside from the occasional sobs that came out of Dixie’s throat. After crying for a long time, she started talking.

“The first time I knew was because of a letter.”

Deatrice was surprised. It appears that she already knew things from the beginning.

“Once, I went to my husband’s study and noticed the strange smell of a woman’s perfume that didn’t belong to me. So I tracked the scent and it led me to a hastily crumpled letter full of unspeakable obscenity. I waited until Ray came back and threw the letter to his face. He couldn’t say anything after he realized what it was.”

Her voice cracked, but she continued anyways,

“Crying, anger, fighting—all of these happened one after another and I harbored unbearable hatred towards him. But after a month, he became restless and courted me as if his life depended on it. It’s like things reverted back to the time before we were married.”

“So I thought to accept the idea when he said that it was just a mistake. He had done well trying to make things up to me after all and that, perhaps, if I gave him another chance, things would start looking better for us. But it wasn’t long before the next one came.”

After saying that, Dixie looked extremely tired. Deatrice wanted to tell her to stop if it would only aggravate her emotions and harm the baby. But she could tell the woman had some things to let out of her chest, so she let her be.

“He cheated repeatedly that soon, he even got lazy about hiding it. He would beg for forgiveness every time I caught him, but it barely changed anything. I hurried to get pregnant hoping a child would make things a little different between us. But when I think of how naive that thought had been… all of it just feels so disgusting now.”

Deatrice couldn’t even begin to imagine the anguish of a woman scorned multiple times over. Moreover, she was pregnant and had heightened emotional sensitivity. She wondered what goes through her mind whenever she sees her unfaithful husband.

Instead, she asked, “Are you okay? You fell and hurt your leg earlier.”

Dixie sighed and lifted the hem of her skirt. When she pulled down her stockings, she could see her legs already bruised and blue. Deatrice creased her forehead in response to how awful it was starting to look. But Dixie just stared at it with an unbothered gaze and let go of the hem, concealing the swollen skin.

“Can you pick up that ring?”