Chapter 56
After a moment's pause, Susan took a deep breath and gestured for Logan to wheel her inside.
The room was quiet. Harsh white light poured down from overhead, falling on the frail figure in the bed. The heart monitor beeped steadily, each sound like a countdown.
Logan wheeled Susan to the bedside. Evelyn stood a short distance away. The caregiver glanced at them, murmured "Stay with her," and quietly withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Only four people remained in the room.
Susan's gaze fell on the bed. The face was aged, the hair white and sparse, lips cracked, breathing so shallow it was barely visible.
Susan looked at that face with impossible tenderness, yet an expression too complex to decipher.
"Alice," she called softly.
The old woman didn't respond.
Susan reached out and took the hand resting outside the blanket. Once, these hands had clinked glasses with hers, signed contracts together, encouraged each other countless times.
Now they were withered and bony, skin thin as paper, veins protruding.
She held that hand for a long time without speaking.
Evelyn and Logan watched quietly from the side, neither daring to make a sound.
After a while, Susan finally spoke, her voice so low it was almost a murmur.
"Alice, we misunderstood each other our whole lives."
She paused, her voice darkening. "Now you're leaving... and I still haven't found Emily."
Evelyn froze. Emily. She'd never heard Susan mention that name before. Was this the person Mrs. Gray had been searching for?
"Mrs. Gray," Evelyn hesitated before asking softly, "who is Emily?"
Susan didn't turn around. She continued looking at the woman in the bed, silent for so long that Evelyn thought she wouldn't answer.
Then she spoke, her voice light, as if drifting from far away.
"Emily was my daughter-in-law."
Evelyn went still.
"And the girl Alice raised for twenty years as her own daughter."
Susan's gaze remained on Mrs. Maple's face, carrying the weight of decades.
"It's all fate's cruel joke, really. Alice and I met when we were both in our early twenties."
Susan's voice was flat, as if telling someone else's story. But Evelyn could hear what lay beneath that calm—decades of buried emotion.
"I was a runaway. My family wanted to marry me off for the bride price. I refused and climbed out the window in the middle of the night. I had five dollars in my pocket—not even enough for a bus ticket. Alice wasn't much better off. Two desperate women met at a hot dog stand."
A slight smile curved Susan's lips.
"She sat across from me crying, tears dripping into her bowl. I don't know where I got the courage, but I snapped at her—what's crying going to solve? She looked up at me with red eyes and said, 'Then what do you suggest?' I said, 'Let's do it ourselves.'"
Back then, no one took them seriously. Everyone said women couldn't succeed in business, that women should go home and have babies.
But they did it. They ran sales together, got thrown out of places together, ate hot dogs at street stalls together. When Susan got sick, Alice took care of her. When Alice was bullied, Susan fought back for her.
Eventually their business grew, and they became the "career women" everyone talked about. They both got married, had children, built different lives.
But privately, they were still themselves. Back then, they'd joked about arranging a marriage between their children. It actually came true.
Emily was raised by Mrs. Maple, who treasured her like the apple of her eye for over twenty years. That girl was beautiful, kind-hearted, bright and cheerful, smiled at everyone.
"She always called me Aunt Susan so sweetly. My son fell for Emily the first time he saw her."
It should have been a perfect match.
But just before the wedding, the Maple family's biological daughter showed up.
That's when both families learned Emily had been switched at birth.
"It shouldn't have mattered," Susan's voice remained level. "We didn't care about that."
Evelyn listened, a sense of foreboding creeping in.
"But after Emily married into our family, things happened. I was deceived by appearances."
She paused, her throat working.
"I misunderstood Emily. Thought she was after our family's money, thought she... had wronged my son."
Evelyn's fingers clenched.
"I forced them to divorce. Emily left. Never heard from again."
Susan looked down at the hand she was holding.
"Alice hated me. She had every right to. I hurt her heart and Emily's too. We were never the same after that. For over a decade, we never saw each other."
"It wasn't until this year that I discovered what happened back then was orchestrated. Someone deliberately sowed discord to make me misunderstand Emily." Susan's voice began to shake.
"I came to find Alice, to tell her, to ask where Emily was. But she told me..." She stopped.
Evelyn watched her.
Susan's tears finally fell. "Emily is already dead."
Those three words landed softly in the hospital room but struck everyone's heart like a blow.
"Now I just want to find her," Susan's voice trembled. "Dead or alive, I want to apologize to her face."
She held Mrs. Maple's hand, pressing that withered hand against her own cheek.
"Alice, I'm so sorry."
"I'm sorry..."
Evelyn stood nearby, watching this scene, something lodged in her chest.
Just then, a light cough came from the bed. Mrs. Maple had woken.
Susan's head snapped up. Their eyes met.
That gaze spanned decades. Two aged faces, two clouded eyes, finally seeing into each other's hearts again.
"Alice..." Susan's voice shook badly.
Mrs. Maple looked at her, her expression complex—resentment, hatred, and too many other things to name.
"You came to see me," she rasped, her voice like sandpaper.
Susan's tears flowed again.
"We're both so old now," she said. "Alice, about Emily... I'm so sorry."
Mrs. Maple's eyes dimmed.
"What good is sorry?" Her voice was light as a sigh. "Can it bring back the time Emily lost?"
Susan couldn't speak.
Mrs. Maple suddenly grew agitated. She struggled to lift her hand and grabbed Susan's arm. The grip was pitifully weak, yet it seemed to take all her strength.
"You have to... find her..." she forced out the words. "You must... find her..."
Susan nodded desperately.
"Don't worry. I'll find her. Dead or alive, I'll find her."
Mrs. Maple looked at her, her lips moving as if to say more.
Then suddenly, her gaze shifted past Susan to Evelyn standing behind her.
In the next second, her eyes widened.