Chapter 92 The Last Thing I Did for Her
Adeline raised her eyebrows and smiled faintly, "How is that even possible?"
She and Bennett saw the news just last night at the supermarket—Molly clearly boarded the plane and was walking on a campus in Australia.
How could she still be in Denver?
"It's true."
Helen sighed and looked up, her tear-stained eyes holding Adeline's steady gaze. "The thing is... Jasper isn't as decent as he seems."
"He fabricated the whole charade of Molly studying abroad..."
"The footage of her so-called overseas study was all staged."
Helen grew more agitated as she spoke, dabbing at her tears with a tissue and sighing, "Truth is, Molly's under house arrest by Jasper."
"She's confined and guarded round the clock, with no freedom to go anywhere..."
"That's hard to believe," Adeline frowned.
She knew well enough, even six years ago, that Jasper was deeply devoted to Molly. It fit his character to send Molly abroad for self-reflection instead of punishing her after such an incident.
It was Helen who had said, “He would never factor Molly into his schemes."
"It's true!"
With tears streaming down her face, Helen clutched at Adeline's arm with a sense of urgency, "Ms. Wilson, Molly's being held somewhere heavily guarded."
"She reached out to me in secret to tell me so."
"I tried to contact her again, but there's no trace of her digital signal anymore."
Her voice was thick with emotion as she grasped Adeline's hands tighter, "You must know where she is now, right?"
"It was you who accused Molly of betraying Lauren, and you who presented the evidence."
"So you must also know what Jasper has decided to do with Molly, right?"
Her eyes, filled with desperation and hope, bore into Adeline's, "I'm not asking you to persuade Jasper to let Molly go, but could you... could you at least find out what's really going on?"
"Who is setting Molly up from behind the scenes?"
"I know my daughter! She would never do such a thing!"
Adeline curved her lips into a half-smile and steeled herself as she pried Helen's fingers from her hand, one by one. "There's no such slander."
"What if it was Adeline, though?"
Helen lifted her head and looked steadily at Adeline, "What if my eldest daughter intentionally provoked Lauren to set Molly off?"
"What if she pushed Lauren to enrage Molly?"
"Is that possible?"
"Even though Adeline hasn't come back, she... she might have framed Molly with this scheme so she could take Jasper for herself, right?"
Adeline closed her eyes.
"Adeline is also your daughter. Why do you trust Molly so implicitly and not her?"
Helen's face turned a shade paler.
After a moment, she hung her head, "Because..."
"Because of what she did back then, I simply can't trust her."
"She claimed that Jasper was her life's one true love, yet in the end, she ran off with another man and faked a car accident; she worried us to death!"
"She had a child with Jasper but sent the child back to us and then vanished without a trace!"
"How can I trust someone who lies so easily and shirks the responsibility of raising her own flesh and blood?"
Adeline's heart became so cold that it felt like it had just been plucked from an ice cave.
"Ms. Wilson."
Taking a deep breath, Helen handed Adeline a slip of paper, "Here are several IP addresses that Molly used to contact me after she was confined. I consulted with professionals, and they said these IPs are masked."
"But a skilled hacker could decipher the real IP address behind a fake pattern," Helen explained.
"Please, I'm begging you," she pleaded, her lips quivering as she pulled out two bank cards. "You must be short on cash if you're working as staff at Blue Bay, right?"
"I could give you all this money," she said, sliding one of the cards into Adeline’s hand. "This is my savings over the years. Take this card and help me find Molly, will you?"
"I'm not from around Denver; this place isn't home to me, and apart from the Foster family, you're the only one I know," Adeline said. Then, she pressed the second card into Adeline’s hand as well. "This card... this card has a lot of money as well."
"I'll give it to you if you can help find the evidence to clear Molly's name, okay?"
Adeline looked down at the two cards in her hand, feeling a sense of familiarity.
One was Helen's life savings, a card she had helped her apply for years ago.
The other...
Well, that was the card where she put all her assets before marrying Jasper—her entire pre-wedding fortune—which she then gave to Helen. Back then, she figured she was getting married too early and moving too far away, taking away the chance for her to properly show gratitude to her parents, so she gave Helen all the money she could.
But who could have imagined...
Years later, here she was under a different identity, and Helen was giving that card back to her, asking her to exonerate Molly.
"Mrs. Collins, what if after my investigation it turns out Molly isn't innocent?" Adeline asked.
Helen paused, caught off guard by the question.
After a moment, she sighed with hesitation, "If it really is Molly..."
"I'll have to accept it," she concluded, closing her eyes.
"I've only ever had two daughters. My eldest has already disappointed me enough; if my youngest is also..."
She trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.
Adeline’s heart was a tangle of emotions as she bit her lip and observed her mother’s weary and aged face. If only her mother had believed in her a little more... But she couldn't entirely blame her. The events back then must have hit her hard for her to accept what she thought was the truth. Maybe she too had struggled not to believe it.
Just like how Adeline felt now...
"Okay, I'll help you," Adeline finally spoke after a long silence, taking a deep breath and handing the bank cards back to Helen.
"I don't want your money."
"All I ask is, if in the end I prove that your younger daughter is not innocent, please don't misunderstand your older daughter anymore."
"She's had it rough over the years."
After saying this, Adeline stood up and strode out.
Helen bit her lip, her gaze following Adeline's retreat as a faint frown creased her brows.
For some reason... this woman named Adeline felt strangely familiar to her.
...
After leaving the hospital, Adeline sent a set of IP addresses to Blake.
"What's up?"
Blake fired up his computer, cracking the pattern while he asked.
"Check it out. Molly might be there. Your grandma asked me to help find her and, by the way, to clear her name."
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.
"You agreed?"
"Yeah."
Adeline took a deep breath. "Consider it the last thing I do for my biological mother. Let's expose the truth about Molly."
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