Chapter 4

Charlotte POV

The rain kept falling.

I begged a kind truck driver to take me to the hospital.

But when I stumbled into the inpatient building, everything was already too late.

Yellow police tape was pulled up at the elevator entrance.

Several security guards stood around with serious expressions.

I frantically tried to rush in but was held back firmly.

"What are you doing? You can't go in!"

"Please, I'm a patient's family member! My grandmother is being resuscitated! Let me in!"

My face was covered in rainwater mixed with paint, my voice hoarse beyond recognition.

The security guard frowned and was about to drive me away when a nurse happened to pass by and recognized me.

She spoke a few words to the security guard in a low voice and pulled me through the staff passage.

She looked at me with complex eyes—eyes filled with sympathy and pity.

"Ms. Harper... there's no need to go in."

She said softly.

Those few short words were like a thunderbolt, shattering me completely.

I stood frozen in place, opening my mouth but unable to make a sound.

No need to go in... what did that mean?

The nurse turned her head away, unable to bear looking at me:

"Just now a group of people caused trouble outside the hospital room, throwing things and shining laser pointers at the patient's eyes..."

"Your grandmother already had a weak heart. She was frightened, and... and she kept calling your name. She couldn't catch her breath."

"They tried to resuscitate her for half an hour but couldn't save her."

I don't know how I made it to the morgue entrance.

That kind old woman who used to warm my hands in her armpits during winter now lay quietly on a cold metal bed.

Covered with a white sheet.

With trembling hands, I lifted a corner of the white sheet.

Grandma's eyes were still half-open, as if she died with unfinished business, or as if she was waiting for someone.

"Grandma..."

I knelt on the ground and pressed my face against her already cold hand.

Tears burst forth but no sound came out.

The caregiver who had been looking after Grandma walked over with red eyes and handed me a crumpled plastic bag.

"Ms. Harper, this is what your grandmother was clutching tightly before she passed."

"She said... this is money for you, telling you not to wrong yourself."

I opened the bag with trembling hands.

Inside was a stack of small bills and a credit card.

The credit card had only thirty thousand dollars.

That was what Grandma had saved penny by penny over these years through frugal living.

She knew I wasn't doing well at the Walker house, knew Ethan had changed.

She wanted to leave me a way out.

But I didn't even see her one last time.

I could even imagine her fear in the last moments of her life, surrounded by those cyber bullies.

She was waiting for me.

Waiting for the me she'd protected since childhood to save her.

But I didn't come.

And the man she once loved was now holding the murderer who killed her, dreaming sweet dreams.

I clutched that stack of bills still warm with body heat and sat on the cold morgue floor all night.

The next morning, the rain stopped.

I walked out of the hospital and looked at the rising sun.

The sunlight was blinding, shining on me but without a trace of warmth.

I took out my phone and looked at the dozens of missed calls, all from the hospital.

Ethan's chat box still stopped at last night's message:

"Sophie is timid. Don't call and scare her."

I looked at that line of text and suddenly found it funny.

Really funny.

I laughed out loud, laughed until tears flowed, laughed until my stomach cramped.

It was in that moment.

A certain corner of my heart completely collapsed.

The Charlotte who loved Ethan Walker died in last night's rainy night.