Chapter 21: Epilogue
Many years later–so many that I’d sold the rights to several of my books, become a famous screenwriter, and achieved financial freedom–my mother never mentioned government jobs again. She bragged about her successful daughter to everyone she met.
Jake had gone abroad and remained single. He never returned.
But every year on my birthday and during holidays, he would send me a gift. Alex would angrily throw them all away.
By then, Alex and I had been married for three years, and our child could already
call me “Mama.”
One day while Alex was playing with our child, my phone died, so I used his phone to log into my story website. That’s when I accidentally discovered that familiar string of random characters–the username of the mysterious benefactor.
I froze.
“It was you all along?”
“Wait, how did you know what I wrote? Why would you—”
Alex seemed to just remember this incident. Holding our child and leaning against me, the corner of his mouth turned up.
“You shared your story on Twitter once. You deleted it quickly, but I saw it.”
“As for why,” he said with a smile, “I read all your novels and thought they were
excellent, especially the new one you were writing then.”
“I thought you just needed a chance to be discovered. Looks like I had good taste
-I never had to vote again, and your books took off on their own.”
An indescribable wave of bittersweet warmth flooded my chest, and I suddenly
threw myself at him.
“The baby! The baby!” he shouted, then simply set our child aside and hugged me
back.
The afternoon sun shone down on us..
Somehow, without my noticing, Autumn had arrived long ago.
