Chapter 570

Cameron Summers also rubbed his hands together, a fawning smile on his face. "That’s right, my dear niece. Your Third Uncle promises you, Clark and I have quit gambling! We truly know we were wrong this time. Gambling is a disease! We’ll never touch that stuff again!"

After speaking, the father and son duo looked at Melody Summers with faces full of sincerity, as if they had truly repented.

Seeing this, Melody Summers just scoffed and said nothing.

She’d lost count of how many times these two had "sincerely repented" in front of her. Each time, they acted full of remorse, weeping and wailing. They’d swear oaths to the heavens, looking like they were ready to rip their hearts out to prove their sincerity. Even an Oscar-winning actor would have to admit defeat in the face of their performance.

But Melody Summers wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice. When it came to a gambling addict’s words, she wouldn’t even trust the punctuation!

When Melody Summers remained silent, Cameron Summers grew so awkward he nearly rubbed his hands raw. He forced himself to calm down, swallowed hard, and said with a sheepish laugh, "...My dear niece, don’t blame your uncle for being thick-skinned... I’m truly at the end of my rope this time. My only choice was to come to you for help..."

Beside him, Clark Summers nodded, saying with a wronged expression, "Cousin, we really have nowhere else to go. Our house was washed away by the flood, and the crops we planted were all submerged..."

After the extreme cold ended, Cameron Summers’s family of three moved out of The Metropolis Residences and returned to Jade Rowan’s rural hometown.

The torrential rains hadn’t started yet. Following government policy, they received a batch of seeds and planted a few acres of land. They watered and fertilized the fields, waiting for a harvest that would feed their family.

But what they didn’t expect was that just as the crops began to sprout, before any harvest could be seen, the torrential rains and floods arrived.

Jade Rowan’s hometown was in a low-lying area, right in a flood discharge zone. When the upstream cities opened their floodgates to release the water, the torrent poured down. Not only were the crops they had worked so hard to plant destroyed, but their house was also swept away by the floodwaters.

Cameron Summers’s family of three evacuated with a government-organized rescue team. After a roundabout journey, they ended up back in Anworth. They stayed at a shelter for a while but found it unbearable, which was why they had now come looking for Melody Summers.

Melody Summers looked at the fawning father-and-son duo before her, speechless. ’Come to me for help?’

’You’ve got to be kidding me!’

After everything they’d done before, how did they have the nerve to show up at her door?

Melody Summers shot the two a glance and said impatiently, "We cut ties back during the blizzard. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten? If you have nowhere to go, go to the government shelters. I’m not taking you in."

The moment Melody Summers finished speaking, the expressions on both Cameron Summers’s and Clark Summers’s faces changed.

They had assumed that after so much time, and with their sincere attitude of repentance, Melody Summers would soften, for family’s sake. They never imagined she would be so cold-blooded.

A flash of hatred crossed Clark Summers’s eyes, but he quickly concealed it, putting his smile back on as he pleaded with Melody Summers. "Cousin, those shelters are no place for people!"

"The supplies there are scarce. We’re always living from one meal to the next. People fight every day over a mouthful of food. People get beaten to death every day! Even the police turn a blind eye because they can’t manage it all... Cousin, can you really bear to watch us wait to die in a place like that?"

Clark Summers’s eyes were filled with desperation, but Melody Summers was completely unmoved. She was about to retort, ’Why couldn’t I bear it?’, when she suddenly felt something was wrong...

Melody Summers studied the father and son suspiciously and asked, puzzled, "...Why is it just the two of you? Where’s Third Aunt?"

Jade Rowan used to follow this father and son everywhere. Why wasn’t she here this time?

Hearing Melody Summers mention Jade Rowan, the expressions on Cameron Summers and Clark Summers immediately turned strange. Clark, who had been looking at Melody with a pleading face, now turned his head away uncomfortably and said nothing.

After a moment of silence, Cameron Summers scratched his head and answered awkwardly, "She... she... Ugh! She ran off with another man!"

"What?!" Melody Summers was stunned and subconsciously questioned, "How is that possible?!"

Jade Rowan had been married to Cameron Summers for so many years and had always stood by him. Even when he was constantly gambling and racking up huge debts, even when she had to face debt collectors and hide from them, she had never once mentioned divorce. How could she suddenly run off with another man now?

Seeing the disbelief written all over Melody Summers’s face, Cameron Summers hurriedly explained, "It’s true! I’m not lying! She really did run off with another man!"

"That woman is a whore! A bitch! That bastard just gave her a piece of roasted potato, and she abandoned her husband and son to run off with him!"

"She... She abandoned her own son for a bit of food! She’s not even human!"

As if to corroborate Cameron’s words, Clark Summers’s eyes slowly reddened. He raised a hand to wipe them and said in a trembling voice, "...*Sob*... We have nowhere to go... Even Mom doesn’t want us anymore..."

Then he looked up at Melody Summers and begged, "Cousin, just let us stay for two days. Just two days, please? I’m begging you!"

"I just want a good night’s sleep. The shelter is too chaotic. I don’t dare to sleep there. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep in so long..."

Melody Summers ignored Clark Summers’s pleas. She was still thinking about Jade Rowan. She felt that things weren’t that simple.

’With Jade Rowan’s traditional personality, she just doesn’t seem like the type of person who would abandon her husband and son...’

Seeing that Melody Summers was still ignoring him, Clark Summers found it hard to keep crying. He was furious inside, not understanding how his cousin could have become so heartless.

As he cursed her silently, he raised a hand to rub his red, swollen eyes. The next second, his gaze fell directly on the plastic bag in Melody Summers’s hand.

Although the plastic bag was black and he couldn’t see what was inside, his intuition told him it most likely contained food!

Clark Summers swallowed hard. While Melody Summers wasn’t looking, he took two steps forward, reaching out to grab the plastic bag. "Cousin, what’s this? Is it food? I’m starving. Can you give me some?" he said as he moved.

Seeing this, Melody Summers quickly stepped back, dodging Clark Summers’s outstretched hand.

But Clark Summers had already grabbed the edge of the bag. In the struggle between them, a bright yellow snow pear accidentally rolled out of the bag and fell to the ground.

Seeing this, both Clark Summers and Cameron Summers froze.

’It was fruit!’

Fruit was the rarest of luxuries these days! They hadn’t eaten any in a very long time!

Clark Summers stared blankly at the snow pear, his eyes wide and fixed. His mouth began to water uncontrollably. Forgetting everything else, he lunged for it!