Chapter 9
The results revealed that the baby’s high fever had caused lasting damage, leaving him deaf and mute.
What kind of parents could be so cruel?
To throw their baby away in a dumpster, causing him to become deaf and mute?
As Tracie thought about her own past-how her parents had abandoned her, how Grover had treated her with cold in- difference-she felt a deep connection with this abandoned, deaf child.
How could she abandon him too?
After discussing it with Grover, he, unsurprisingly, refused.
He didn’t want the child she was carrying, so how could he want one she had adopted?
“I’ll let him take my last name, and I’ll raise him myself!” Tracie, who had always been obedient to Grover, was reso- lute on this.
She was determined to keep the child.
In the end, for the sake of the Stanton family’s reputation, Grover reluctantly allowed the child to carry the “Stanton”
surname.
His name became Rico Stanton.
But that was all-just a name on paper and a formal registration.
In reality, the entire Stanton family never allowed Rico to return to the family home.
Even Wendi didn’t like him.
No matter how much Rico tried to protect Wendi, always yielding to her, she never accepted him as family.
Only Tracie truly cared for Rico.
From the moment she learned that he was deaf and mute, she never gave up on helping him.
Now, after years of treatment and multiple hearing aids, he finally got a cochlear implant. After more than a year of speech rehabilitation, his speech was now just like that of any other child.
“Mom, why are you crying?” Rico asked, lifting his tiny hand to wipe away Tracie’s tears.
Why was she crying?
How could she explain to a five-year-old that she had just given up on her own daughter?
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Chapter 9
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The pain was worse than having her heart torn out.
Tracie swallowed her tears and smiled at him. “I’m crying because from now on, you don’t have to go to the rehab center anymore. You can go home with Mommy.”
“Really, Mommy?” Rico asked, his face lighting up with excitement.
“Of course!”
But then Rico’s expression faltered. “But Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt, and Daddy don’t like me. My sister doesn’t like me either. I don’t want to go home…”
As she heard this, Tracie’s heart broke all over again.
How much was this like her own past?
At sixteen, she had gone through the same thing.
The age when a girl was supposed to be blooming, but instead, she was thrown out of her home by her parents and grandparents.
“It’s okay, Mommy loves you. You’re Mommy’s precious one, and I’m taking you to a home that’s just for us. From now on, I will only be Rico’s mommy. Okay?” Tracie pulled him even closer.
“Okay!” Rico smiled through his tears.
Tracie drove Rico back to the apartment she had rented. Once they arrived, she turned on her phone.
As soon as the phone powered up, it rang.
She figured it was probably Lesa or someone else from the Stanton family. She didn’t want to answer, but Rico saw the call and excitedly shouted, “Mom, it’s Mandy calling!”
Even though Rico was deaf, he was remarkably intelligent.
At just over five years old, he already knew many words.
He recognized the caller as “Mandy.”
Tracie had met Mandy Kaiser when she was ten years old.
At the time, eighteen-year-old Mandy was in a relationship with her eighteen-year-old older brother.
But how could someone from a prestigious family ever accept someone like Mandy-unpolished, lacking refinement, and completely unlike the perfect women they were used to?
That year, her parents sent her brother abroad.
Mandy cried every day outside their house. The housemaids mocked her, calling her a silly, lovesick fool. Only Tra- cie felt sorry for her. She secretly gave Mandy a handkerchief to wipe her tears, and even gave her some snacks, a Barbie doll, and a stuffed animal. She even slipped her some pocket money.
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