Chapter 348: Failed Proof and Frustrated Hearts
Sophia was persistent, calling a second time. The ringing echoed through the room, an irritating noise filling the air. Feeling rather helpless, Ellis swiped to answer.
“Hello, Madam Sophia.”
Back when she had suffered a mild concussion, Sophia had at least visited her at the hospital. In the past, Sophia had always treated her kindly, so Ellis figured she should maintain basic manners; she couldn’t completely ignore Sophia’s calls.
“Ellis, it’s me, Easton.”
Finally getting through, Easton’s earlier joy faded, replaced by a look of anticipation, eagerly awaiting Ellis’s response. Hearing her ex-husband’s voice instead of Sophia’s, Ellis felt an overwhelming urge to reach through the phone and punch him square in the face.
Was this ever going to end? His cheating, whether true or not, didn’t matter to her anymore. She gritted her teeth in disgust. “Can you stop putting on a show? Seriously, can you just give it a rest? You’re exhausting.”
The anticipation drained from Easton’s face as he subtly furrowed his brows. “A show?”
“If you love performing so much, why don’t you join a circus and be a monkey? The president of Hudson Group playing monkey tricks, what a headline that would be! You’d be the king of the monkeys, drawing crowds everywhere!”
With that biting remark, Ellis ended the call without hesitation. A few seconds later, she regretted it. Not because her words had been too harsh, but because she regretted answering the call in the first place. Clearly, most of Sophia’s calls were best left unanswered! Because Easton would use his mother’s number! She had done her best to reduce or even avoid any contact with her ex-husband; couldn’t he just leave her alone?
Easton’s expression changed too quickly; one moment he was full of joy, and the next, as if dark clouds had rolled in, his face turned gloomy and heavy, like he’d just suffered a setback. Sophia paused, slightly startled. The last time she’d seen her son like this was when he was a child. Seeing him hang his head helplessly as he handed her the phone back, Sophia asked with concern, “What’s wrong? What did Ellis say?”
“Be a monkey.” Repeating her words, Easton sank back to the same state he’d been in yesterday, gloomy and defeated. For a moment, Sophia was speechless. Ellis’s words were clearly mocking her son! But… there was no fault to find with her reasoning. Easton and Ellis had been divorced for several months now. Ellis had already moved on with her own life, yet her son was still racking his brain trying to win her back. It was only natural that Ellis wouldn’t have anything nice to say to him; expecting her to be friendly was unrealistic.
Seeing his mother’s silence and lack of comfort, Easton couldn’t help but ask, “Mom, aren’t you going to say something to cheer me up?”
“Do you really need my comfort?” Sophia countered before continuing. “What’s been going on between you and Ellis these past few days? Tell me everything.”
“Mom, am I really your biological son?” Easton’s face darkened as an image of himself performing in a circus flashed through his mind. “Ellis thinks I cheated on her with Victoria. Yesterday, I went to talk to her about it, and this morning, I even had someone deliver proof that I didn’t cheat.”
After hearing her son’s explanation, Sophia wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Sure enough, if it was something even she had almost misunderstood, Ellis was bound to have misunderstood it too.
“What evidence did you show Ellis? Let me see it too,” she said, wanting to know how her son tried to prove he hadn’t cheated and why it had triggered such a reaction from Ellis.
“I didn’t bring it with me.”
“Then just tell me about it.”
Easton roughly explained what kind of evidence he’d put together. At first, his mother listened with interest, but as he went on, her expression shifted from curious to incredulous, and finally, she just stared at him like she was looking at an idiot. Her gaze was so obviously that of someone holding back from calling him foolish that Easton couldn’t help but press his lips together.
“Mom, you don’t have to hold it in. If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”
“I just want to ask the heavens why I gave birth to such a foolish son. Why can’t you be a little smarter?” The longer she spoke, the more Sophia’s voice carried a tone of sorrow. Of course, the sorrow wasn’t real; it was just for show. She couldn’t believe her son seemed incapable of applying even a shred of intelligence to managing his relationship with his wife. Did he seriously think that simply presenting some so-called evidence would make Ellis believe everything he said? If earning someone’s trust were that easy, it would require a solid foundation of faith in each other to begin with. Had it never crossed his mind that maybe, just maybe, he and Ellis had no such foundation? Whatever trust once existed between them had probably been destroyed long before their divorce.
Right now, what her son needed to focus on wasn’t proving over and over that nothing inappropriate had happened between him and Victoria; it was rebuilding the trust he and Ellis had lost. Only by rebuilding that foundation of trust would Ellis believe what her son had to say. Otherwise, all he’d do was make her feel even more annoyed.
Having just been mocked by Ellis and now criticized by his mother, Easton frowned deeply in frustration. “Mom, should we get a paternity test?”
Sophia was momentarily speechless, her gaze fixed squarely on her son’s face. Not only did her son inherit his father’s stubborn personality, but he also bore a striking resemblance to that same stubborn man.