Chapter 381: Chapter 381

What shocked Aliya after all this was the fact that Ian never came to see her in the days that followed as well. She never expected the members of the Thornston family to do that because they had no relations to each other, but Ian was different... at least in her eyes, she had some weight in his heart.

From the first day, Aliya had braced herself for the changes that could occur, but never in her wildest dreams did she expect that Ian never stepped a foot in her hospital room after that day. He did call in from time to time to find out about her but apart from this, he never made any other effort.

Ian made sure that she wanted nothing as there was an around-the-clock care for her, but this was not what Aliya wanted! She wanted him! And no one else!

However, it took a while for her to start to warm up to the dedicated care helpers assigned to her. This was for the simple reason that they could fill her in on all that had happened in the two years that she had been under.

It took mere days before she was able to piece a lot of the information together, and Aliya’s heart took a calm turn. Apparently, the public thought that the three children actually belonged to Ian and his first wife, who had died.

She smiled to herself as a question popped into her head, ’What would happen if this wife came back to life? Will his current marriage be void?’

Aliya’s thoughts took a different turn from that time on. There was only one thing that she cared about, and that was to get Ian back, no matter the method she used. At that point, Tyler was all but missing from her mind.

’Tyler! Guide your girl in this endeavor!’ She pleaded in her mind.

From that day, since Ian and his wife had visited, it took two long days before her children finally visited her in the hospital.

Aliya was not sure of where her thoughts were, and she had all but forgotten everything but her new quest for Ian.

When the three children walked into the sterile room, their hesitant smiles and concerned eyes searching her face, she greeted them with what seemed like warmth.

Aliya was propped up in bed then. Her eyes lingered on Samantha, Ingrid and then finally on Gabriel. They had grown and changed so much! — faces sharper, postures taller, their youthful energy now tempered with a hint of maturity far more than they had when she had last seen them.

It was subtle but none missed her keen eyes. ’It figured,’ Aliya thought bitterly, because they had told her she’d been unconscious for two years.

Two years! All that time lost! She tried to imagine what she could have done in that time and what would have changed had that not happened.

It sounded so distant, like a lifetime she had missed. Her oldest, Samantha, now carried an air of responsibility that hadn’t been there before, her shoulders slightly squared as if she was unburdened and loved well. She exuded the face of a well-cared-for teen.

The middle and her only biological child, Ingrid, always her timid one, had softened, her eyes carrying a wisdom that seemed misplaced for her age. There was something about Ingrid that she couldn’t place her hand on. Something that seemed just out of her reach. And the youngest—oh, the youngest, Gabriel—his babyish features had all but disappeared, replaced with the air of a child who had grown up too quickly.

Aliya had expected to feel happy at the sight of them, but instead, she felt a pang of loss twist in her chest. Two years of birthdays, holidays, and fleeting moments—gone. Two years that some other woman had likely filled with laughter and comfort.

The thought burned. She had expected to see some sort of neglect or anything that she could use, but she rather saw well-loved children. Nothing could hide that. She had to thank the new wife for this, though. She did not know how to organize her emotions at that time.

Yet, she smiled—of course, Aliya smiled. She had to for the sake of the kids. With Tyler no more though, she had no idea of what to do with these three.

Her lips stretched into the warm, maternal expression she knew they needed to see. "You’ve all grown so much," she said softly, her voice steady despite the crack threatening to form.

The children beamed, but there was a slight reservedness and awkwardnesses that Aliya felt from there. There was a disconnect. She had expected that innocent joy. That was supposed to have been a sharp contrast to the turmoil brewing inside her. For a moment, the room was unnaturally quiet despite their presence.

"Come closer," she urged, forcing another brittle smile on her face, her voice softening a notch.

Gabriel looked at his siblings for some sort of reassurance before he scrambled onto a seat close to the bed so that he could lean closer to her, his tiny hands reaching for her face, but then he hesitated and dropped his hands.

He had been told that this was his mummy, but Gabriel now preferred his Mama Shelby. This person was almost a stranger to him. Despite this, he remembered what he had promised. "M-om-my, you missed so much! But we still talked about you a lot!"

One could hear the difficulty in addressing her.

Aliya blinked rapidly, holding back the tears. "...And I thought about you every day too," she whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

"You did?" Gabriel asked innocently, and Aliya nodded. Gabriel looked long and hard at the smile, but he thought that it felt strange.

The truth lay buried beneath Aliya’s smile: she wasn’t just mourning the lost time but also the growing gap between their hearts.

They had moved forward in her absence, and though they were there, in the hospital room, then Aliya couldn’t shake the feeling that parts of them no longer belonged to her. She had missed a lot, and the other woman had gained a lot! Even the word, ’Mommy’ sounded so foreign to her as she had not missed the awkwardness in its mentioning.

She reached out, pulling Gabriel close. It was getting uncomfortable with the way he was scrutinizing her face.

"You’ve grown so much!"

She reached out her arms for the other two, stilling for a brief second, when Ingrid muttered under her breath,

"We all have," It wasn’t meant to be cruel, but the sting of truth was sharp. It was so unexpected from the one who had always been timid. Ingrid did step forward after that.

Samantha hesitated a moment and then joined in the group hug.

"How have you been? Have they treated you well? Mum missed you so much!"

Aliya’s voice was steady and calm, seemingly filled with emotions, but beneath the surface, she felt... nothing. Not the rush of relief or joy that a mother should feel. It wasn’t bitterness; it wasn’t anger—it was simply an emptiness, a void where instinctive love should have been.

Maybe it was the injury... or the long coma that she had been? She wasn’t sure. Maybe it was something deeper, something she didn’t dare put into words. But Aliya knew, deep down, that their presence didn’t fill her with warmth. And yet, there was a sharp pang—a different kind of emotion altogether.

This was quite the same for most people. This was because even if Aliya couldn’t summon that maternal bond, the idea of another woman holding her children’s affection burned at her. It gorged her thoughts and twisted her heart. How could another take what belonged to her?!

Another woman whom her children now looked up to, leaned on, and perhaps called "Mom" in the moments she wasn’t there. That thought gnawed at her pride, her sense of identity.

’I am their mother! How dare she! Ho....’

Still, Aliya hid all of this behind her carefully constructed facade, smiling faintly and squeezing their small hands with practiced affection. She released them from the group hug and asked them questions, wanting to know about their lives and, in particular, the time they had spent with Shelby.

"How have you been?" Samantha also asked with an unreadable expression, and Aliya responded, "Much better... and a relief of being alive!"

They chitchatted a bit and Aliya laughed softly at especially Gabriel’s attempt to make innocent conversation. Those innocent comments and nodded at his childish stories. But children, with their keen instincts, can sometimes sense what adults think they’re hiding, even more so than Aliya thought.

Samantha, a perceptive one despite her age, and also blunt in her words, tilted her head slightly as she spoke. "You’re smiling, but you don’t look happy," she said suddenly, the words so simple yet cutting through her mask. She could not bring herself to call Aliya’s Mum yet, so she addressed her with no title.

Aliya’s gaze narrowed, "I’m just tired, darling," she replied smoothly, reaching out to caress Samantha’s hand as if the statement hadn’t struck her.

Gabriel, too innocent to read the subtleties, simply leaned close to her but not entirely against her, which was a bit disconcerting for Aliya.

"Did you miss us, Mom... Mama Aliya?"

Aliya hesitated for the briefest moment, the pause so slight that it could’ve gone unnoticed—but not by Samantha. "Of course I did," she said, her voice soft, almost tender.

And yet, even as the words left her lips, Aliya couldn’t help but wonder if they rang hollow. She didn’t feel the bond she once thought was unbreakable, but she would be damned if she let someone else have it. Even if she couldn’t care about these children the way she was supposed to, the thought of another woman receiving their affection dug into her like a thorn.

Aliya couldn’t help it when the next words fell out of her mouth,

"Did she send you here?" she finally asked, her tone light but laced with something indiscernible.

"Who?" Samantha asked, suddenly frowning slightly.

Aliya sighed, shaking her head with a faint smile, and then she tucked a loose strand of hair behind Gabriel’s ear. "Never mind," she said, and the conversation moved on. Samantha became extra sensitive because of this exchange. She could not say that she had many expectations coming to visit her, but something was just odd. Samantha could not help but cast strange looks at her mother.

Later, as they chatted, Aliya caught Samantha glancing at her as if trying to figure out what was behind her smile. Though Aliya kept her facade perfectly intact, the unspoken understanding that children sometimes have and the way Samatha’s eyes bore into her, left her feeling more exposed than she’d care to admit.

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