Chapter 23
Mary, brimming with excitement, took Noelle to the largest shopping mall in Norland.
Noelle glanced at the shopping list in Mary’s hand and gave a helpless smile. “Mom, we could’ve just picked up some jewelry at a smaller mall. Why come all the way here? If you spend everything on me, what will the Spencers have left to live on with?”
Mary beamed. “Your dad and I barely spend on ourselves. This is money well spent.”
Noelle hooked her arm through Mary’s, her smile warm and sweet.
However, when she looked up, she spotted two familiar figures.
Her brow furrowed as she tightened her grip on Mary’s arm. “Mom, let’s go check out something else.”
Mary spotted Yasmine and Sabrina too. Her expression froze, and she was about to turn away when
Yasmine called out, “Hey! Isn’t this my in–law?”
Mary kept her manners and smiled back. “Hello, Yasmine. What a coincidence! Doing some shopping too?
Yasmine’s face radiated smugness, like a peacock with its tail fanned. “Well, I wouldn’t dare call myself
your in–law anymore. Caleb told me Noelle’s getting remarried.”
Sabrina’s eyes flicked over to Noelle and Mary.
Noelle was wearing a simple white dress while Mary was in a pale green tunic dress.
Sabrina looked down her nose at them. To her, their plain clothes reeked of poverty.
After Caleb had been taken to the police station recently, she’d despised the Spencers even more.
Caleb had meant well by bringing some of Conner’s belongings to help ease Noelle’s grief. But who
would’ve thought she’d turn around and remarry some old geezer?
The Spencers were shameless–selling their daughter for status and even calling the cops to accuse
Caleb of harassing Noelle in the middle of the night.
Sabrina snorted. “You’re only shopping here because you took that old man’s bride price, aren’t you? I
never took you for someone so greedy and vain. Now that Conner’s gone, you’re not even bothering to
keep up the act, are you?”
Before Noelle or Mary could respond, Yasmine chimed in and said, “Noelle, we never treated you badly. did we? I always thought a sheltered daughter like you wouldn’t lose her head over scraps.
“I’m honestly shocked by who you really are. It must have been exhausting pretending all those years in our family, huh?”
Noelle’s brow knit together. It was just her luck to run into them.
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She wondered if there was something radioactive in the Ashford family’s air supply, because they all seemed brain–damaged.
Back then, for the sake of her relationship with Conner, she had swallowed every bit of mistreatment to keep the peace. But with nothing left to protect now, she was done holding back.
Noelle fixed her gaze on Yasmine first, firing back with crisp precision, “You were the one who first called my mom your in–law. When my mom politely responded, you said you wouldn’t dare call yourself our in- law. If you wouldn’t dare, then why call out to us in the first place?
“As for how the Ashfords treated me, you know that better than anyone else.”
Mary tugged on Noelle’s arm, signaling her not to go tit for tat.
Mary had always been gentle and believed that if no real harm was done, it was better to part ways on decent terms. Even if they were no longer connected to the Ashfords, they still lived in Norland, and there had once been a bond between them.
Noelle gave Mary’s hand a light squeeze.
Their gentleness was exactly what the Ashfords had mistaken for weakness, thinking they were easy to push around. And now, here they were, twisting the truth and trampling over them.
Yasmine hadn’t expected Noelle–once so gentle, devoted to Conner, and never daring to voice a complaint–to shoot back at her. For a moment, she was too stunned to think straight.
But Noelle didn’t bother waiting for Yasmine to snap out of her daze. She shifted her gaze to Sabrina and
evenly said, “How much bride price I accept and how I spend it is none of your business. I think you’ve eaten so much sour food the sourness is leaking from your pores.
“You’d better worry less about my life and more about keeping your husband from showing up at the Spencer residence to harass people in the middle of the night.”
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Chapter 24
