Chapter 275: He Will Never Be Able to Come Back Again

Samantha shook her head, tears sliding silently down her cheeks.

"That bastard Edward—I saw how he treated you. Every time you came to visit during those years you were married, your eyes were swollen. You thought covering it with foundation would fool me, but I could tell. I could tell, yet all I did was scold him. I didn't do anything else for you. I kept thinking he was my son, that he'd eventually change. I told you to endure, to wait, to give him another chance. I helped him wrong you."

She lifted her hand, fingers gently brushing Jenna's reddened cheek.

"After you divorced and left carrying Andy, I finally started thinking—if I hadn't indulged him from the start, if I'd disciplined him harshly, made him apologize, made him understand that mistakes must be corrected, would he have ended up like this? Would you two have ended up like this?"

Her voice finally cracked, but she held on.

"He made so many mistakes out there, caused so much trouble, and finally threw away his own life. Those were debts he owed—to you, to Andy, to this family. He chose to repay them with his life. As his mother, my heart aches. I ache so much I want to smash my head against the wall... but I can't say he shouldn't have done it."

She lowered her head, looking at Jenna. "You're the person he wronged most in this life, yet he also did the one thing for you with the most sincerity. Jenna, I don't blame him, and I don't blame you. This was his fate, and his own choice."

Jenna's tears streamed down as she shook her head desperately.

She wanted to say it wasn't his debt to pay. But Samantha gripped her hand, stopping her from speaking.

"Jenna, I want to go to Eldoria. I need to bring him home."

Jenna's head snapped up. "Mom, your health—"

"I know my own body. I'm already dying, kept alive by medication—how much longer can that last? Besides, he's my son. He left alone. I can't let him come back alone too. I can't let him think his mother wouldn't even come to see him one last time. Let him cross the ocean by himself, only to be greeted by a box of ashes."

Her lips trembled, but she forced the words out.

"I have to go. I have to see him one last time."

Jenna lowered her head, tears dripping onto her clenched hands.

She didn't try to dissuade her. She knew it was futile.

This was the last thing a mother could do for her child. She had no right to refuse.

"Alright," Jenna said softly. "I'll go with you."

The hospital room door opened gently.

Hazel stood in the doorway holding Andy. The child had just woken, his little face flushed, dark eyes rolling around. Seeing Jenna, he babbled and reached out his small hands.

Hazel's eyes were red too. She'd heard everything outside the door.

She carried Andy to the bedside. Samantha looked up, and seeing Andy, tears welled up again.

"Come, let Grandma see you." She extended both hands, carefully taking Andy.

The child nestled softly in her arms, neither crying nor fussing.

Samantha held Andy's tiny hand, that little fist clenched tight, dimples showing on the back of his hand.

She studied Andy's features—those bright eyes, the slightly upturned corners—and her tears could no longer be held back.

"He looks just like him. Edward was exactly like this as a baby. When he was born, he was just this small, fists clenched tight, refusing to open them. When he cried, his voice was so loud the whole floor could hear. The nurses said he had great lung capacity, that he'd definitely become an athlete."

She lowered her head, burying her face in Andy's tiny palm, her shoulders shaking violently.

Andy stared at her, the smile gradually fading from his little face.

He was so small, understanding nothing, yet he seemed to sense something. He extended his chubby little hand, clumsily trying to wipe the tears from Samantha's face.

Samantha caught that small hand, pressed it to her lips, and kissed it again and again.

Three days later, Jenna accompanied Samantha onto a flight to Majestic City.

Hazel stayed home to care for Andy. Before they left, she said nothing, only gripped Jenna's hand tightly and said, "Go and come back soon."

Ethan met them at the Majestic City airport. Seeing Samantha, he said nothing, only stepped forward and gently supported her.

The funeral home's small parlor was very quiet. Edward lay peacefully in a white coffin, wearing his favorite charcoal gray coat, a silver-gray tie she'd chosen fastened at his collar.

The injuries on his face had been carefully restored. The gash above his eyebrow was no longer horrifying, just a faint trace remaining.

His eyes were closed, his expression serene—so serene he looked merely asleep.

Samantha stood before the coffin, head bowed, looking at her son for a very long time.

She reached out, gently touching his forehead, his brow bone, his cold lips that would never curl up to argue with her again.

Then she bent down and placed a kiss on his forehead.

"Edward, Mom's here. Mom's come to take you home."

A funeral home staff member approached, quietly asking if they could begin.

Samantha nodded, but her fingers still gripped the coffin's edge, as if letting go meant losing everything.

The staff waited a few seconds before slowly pushing the coffin toward that door.

Jenna stood behind Samantha, watching that door open and close.

The low rumble of the cremation furnace came through from the other side of the wall, muffled, like something heavy collapsing inch by inch.

An hour later, the staff member emerged carrying an urn.

The boy who once played basketball on the court, the groom who refused to smile at his wedding, the man who wrote a final letter in his late-night office before walking out the door without looking back—he was now inside this small box.

Samantha accepted the urn, cradling it in her arms, her palm gently stroking the cold lid.

Her child had been only this big when he was born, small, curled in her arms, crying and fussing.

Now he was this size again, ice cold, never to make another sound.

Jenna looked at that urn, suddenly feeling something hollow inside.

She'd always thought she first met Edward when she was twelve.

That summer, her mother had taken her to visit the Russell family. She wore a newly bought white dress, hiding behind her mother, peeking out to see a young man descending the stairs, smiling as he called her "little sister."

She remembered that afternoon, remembered how he drank water, remembered hiding by the kitchen door watching him, her heart pounding.

But that wasn't true.

Last time she went to sort through her mother's belongings, she'd found that old album with the leather cover in the camphor chest. Turning to the last page, she saw a photograph she'd never seen before.

In the photo, two newborn babies lay side by side on an old-fashioned sofa—one wrapped in a pink blanket, one in blue, four little hands waving in the air as if greeting each other.

Beside the sofa, her mother and Samantha stood together, both laughing heartily.

She turned the photo over. On the back was a line in her mother's handwriting: Jenna and Edward, first meeting, with a smiley face drawn beside it.

So they'd met that early. They'd known each other since they were a month old. She hadn't had the chance to tell him.

She'd planned to tell him next time they met.

See, we've known each other longer than you thought.

But there would be no next time.

Nearly thirty years of entanglement—love, hate, passion, resentment. She'd loved him, waited for him, married him, hated him, forgiven him, and finally wiped his body in the morgue, kneeling before his coffin crying her heart out.

She thought this entanglement would last a lifetime, that one day when they were both gray-haired, they'd sit under the magnolia tree in the yard, drinking tea, flipping through old photos, telling these stories to their grandchildren like jokes.

She'd imagined a day when everything would settle into dust.

But she never imagined the price would be that he'd never come back.