Try Begging - Chapter 172.1
What sin did the baby commit that made her do such a terrible thing?
I regret the time when I hated and struggled with you who were innocent.
A phrase from her mother’s letter lingered in Grace’s head. It felt like a scolding from her mother to not commit deeds she would regret.
I’m not so shameless as to openly say I love you.
Her mother could only utter the words ‘I love you’ by accusing herself of being shameless. She had already repeated her mother’s fate, and she didn’t want to repeat the part where she couldn’t say ‘I love you’ to her daughter.
The taxi entered the townhouse district. It wasn’t long before the Winston family’s building came into view, with lights scattered across the windows.
‘If it’s not too late, I hope you’re still there.’
As soon as the taxi stopped, Grace tossed the fare and rushed outside.
Please, baby, be there.
Running around the fence toward the back door, she chanted the same plea like a prayer in a tearful voice. Her heart felt like it was about to burst out of her chest.
“Huh…”
Turning the corner and catching sight of the black stroller’s canopy beyond the low shrubs, she burst into a laugh that sounded like crying.
It’s there. It’s still there.
There was no one in the backyard.
Judging by the milk basket in front of the door, it seemed no one had come out yet. Grace threw her bag outside the fence and dashed inside.
“My daughter…”
She pulled back the canopy. As she saw the peacefully sleeping baby angel, she could no longer hold back.
“I’m sorry, baby. Mom is sorry.”
Before it was too late, she acknowledged with her own words that she was this child’s mother. Only then did the burdens that had weighed on her for so long vanish as if they had been completely erased.
“Hhing—”
The sudden commotion woke the baby. The child, who had been stretching and grumbling with clenched fists, smiled brightly as soon as her eyes met her mother’s as if to say she had never complained.
Grace also smiled widely, and the tears that had been brimming in her eyes fell freely.
In that moment, Grace saw her reflection in her daughter. She had always held boundless and absolute affection for her own mother. Seeing that same affection mirrored in a six-month-old baby was deeply moving.
As a child, receiving her mother’s love made her feel as if it were Christmas every day.
This baby, smiling as if she were the happiest person in the world just because her mother was present, must be feeling something similar.
‘You are like me.’
She whispered as she kissed her baby’s cheek. As she then pulled the stroller away from the fence, she placed the discarded bag inside and pushed the stroller down the alley, asking herself again.
‘So, what is my life?’
As her daughter began to suck on her thumb, she decided on the answer, placing the pacifier from her pocket into her daughter’s mouth.
‘If living is about doing what I want to do, then, baby, I want to live with you.’
The path laid out for this child was not threefold but fourfold. Having ultimately chosen the path she had initially shunned, Grace walked along the dawn-lit road with her daughter.
* * *
Early in the morning, the center of the capital was quiet.
A sedan, speeding unimpeded along the empty streets, passed by the grand legislative building and headed toward the townhouse. Leon stared blankly out of the car window, lost in thought. His focus returned only when the car suddenly stopped at an intersection.
Someone was crossing the crosswalk beyond the intersection.
At first glance, it appeared to be a mail carrier pushing a black cart, but upon closer inspection, it was a stroller.
“Who’d have thought a mom would be out for a walk with a baby at this hour?”
As the surprised driver remarked, Pierce, seated in the passenger seat, merely shrugged. As the woman ascended the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street and the car started moving again, Leon turned his head left, struck by a sudden sense of déjà vu.
The woman’s gait seemed familiar.
He watched the woman, wearing a deep red wine-colored hat and walking briskly, but the car quickly crossed the intersection, and the woman vanished from his view.
The time was too brief to be certain.
Leon turned his head back to the front. It might have been a mistake. After all, there had been several times when he had mistakenly thought he saw Grace in a passerby.
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