Chapter 201: When Did She Come Back?
Old Mrs. Sandler reached her hand out, with her well-manicured nails, and gently patted Carlos’s back. Her eyes were filled with pure affection.
After he finished his meeting, Francis started to have the time to entertain his parents.
“I’m very fine. Don’t worry about me! You didn’t even have to come all the way down here just to see me.” he said concisely.
“When did she come back?” His father asked, referring to Scarlett.
“The day before yesterday!” Francis said as he looked up. He knew that Scarlett was trying to avoid her parents, and that’s why she was busying herself with mundane, menial tasks.
And then Old Mrs. Sandler sat up and said, “I’ve never seen such an impolite person like her. She didn’t even greet her parents-in-law!”
“I still remember that she treated you respectfully before you did the horrible thing to her.”
She felt kind of embarrassed and didn’t utter another word.
“But we are older than her. Why does she have to make every single interaction so awkward? She has been away from home for half a year, leaving you to take care of the baby, but we didn’t say a single mean word to her about that. We all know it’s atrocious. It’s true that your mother once made a mistake, but she is still her mother-in-law, so she should not treat her with such hostility.”
Francis retorted, “It’s mum who did something wrong first. You should not blame Scarlett for acting coldly towards you! It’s only to be expected.”
“Now, all you care about is her, but you have to remember that I’m your mother. I admit that I was stupid then and did something wrong. But her rude behavior is hardly warranted. How long are you going to keep defending her, Francis?” She said disapprovingly.
“What do you expect her to do? Apologize to you? Are you even ready to accept her apology?’ Francis said.
Mrs. Sandler frowned, her eyebrows knitted until they resembled fat, hairy caterpillars. Francis went on, “If you really care about Carlos, you’d better leave her alone. As you know, the mother will be preferred to take on custody before he is three; if she wants to get a divorce at some point, she will have custody of the kid, and you won’t be able to see Carlos. I’m fine with that.” Francis said calmly.
When his father heard what he said, he was angry with him, but unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything about it. Francis was a grown man. He had been independent of the rest of his family for many years now, and he handled his own business.
Old Mrs. Sandler hesitated a while, confronted with her lovely grandson and her obnoxious daughter-in-law at the same time; she had to accept the fact that if she wanted her grandson, she had to get in Scarlett’s good books somehow…
In the kitchen washing fruits, Scarlett rolled her eyes. She and Francis had gotten a divorce a long time ago, his parents just didn’t know. Francis had managed to deceive his own parents, too.
There were only a couple of oranges and an apple in the fruit basket, but Scarlett wanted to spend as much time away from Francis’s parents as she could. Consequently, she watched each small fruit three times. Then, she took her phone out. To her dismay, it had only been ten minutes. It seemed like the seconds were dragging on endlessly.
Scarlett didn’t want to face them, so she quietly left the kitchen and went to the washroom. She closed the washroom door, sat down on the toilet, and started eating an apple readily.
Right then, her phone began to vibrate in her pocket. Scarlett took it out and saw that the call was from Eve.
***
“Hello, what do you want from me?”Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.
“Damn you, Scarlett, how can you betray me like that?” Eve yelled loudly on the other side. Her yelling deafened Scarlett, so she kept the phone at arm’s length away from her ear.
“Why are you talking like that? I’m in the hospital taking care of Francis. Why are you calling me?”
“Right now, I’m locked up at Damon’s house. You’d better come to get me out of here as soon as possible. You hear me?” Eve said as she guarded the bedroom door on alert because she feared that Damon would show up from nowhere.
“How am I gonna do that? I think I’d better not get involved in this thing between you two.” Scarlett hesitated. To be honest, she was afraid of Damon. He was a scary man in Scarlett’s eyes.
“How dare you say such heartless things to me? When you broke up with Francis, I never said such callous things to you, did I? I’m asking you for help, Scarlett!” Eve screamed out. Obviously, Eve couldn’t bear it anymore.
“Calm down, how am I gonna get you out of there?” she asked.
“I want you to ask Francis to stall Damon for about half a day. I only need half a day. That’s it.” Eve said eagerly, gaining hope that she might actually get out of there in one piece.
“And then? What happened anyway? You escaped to France and got caught again?” Scarlett said.
“What else can I do? I have invested all my money in that goddamn restaurant. I can’t give that up!” she said. “It’s all I have left, Scarlett. It’s all I have left now….”
“Don’t worry about that. Glen is there keeping an eye on the restaurant for us, and I trust he’s not gonna fuck it up. He’s good at what he does, and I don’t think we’re going to have any problems, alright? But what you need to do is sit down with Damon and just tell him what you think. You guys need to sit down and have a real conversation. Hash it out as adults do, you know what I mean? You can’t keep playing this game of cat and mouse, Eve… he’s constantly chasing you, and you’re constantly running away… It just doesn’t make any sense…” Scarlett trailed off.
“Wow, look, who’s a fucking relationship guru now! Do you really think that sitting down with him and talking to him “like adults” is going to work? Don’t you think that I would have gotten rid of him a long time ago if he were a sane man? The whole problem is that he doesn’t listen to me, Scarlett! He’s never listened to me in earnest.”