Chapter 159 - 99: Family Reunion

Wendy Lowell didn’t go to see Paige Summers alone. After thinking it over on the way, she decided to call Sean Raines and ask him to accompany her.

The closer this moment came, the more timid she found herself becoming.

’I have to get my daughter back!’

’But how do I do it?’

’How can I possibly explain the twenty-year-old feud? How can I tell her it wasn’t that her mother didn’t want her, but that her father had insisted on taking her away, and in the end, I was the one who gave in?’

She had always worried her stepson, Sheldon Reid, would be an obstacle. But now that Sheldon had graciously accepted it, she realized the obstacle wasn’t anyone else, but her own guilt.

The moment Paige Summers opened the door, she saw the two people outside, one with a troubled expression, the other looking guilt-ridden...

’What’s going on?’

"Please, come in," she said, stepping aside. No matter what, she couldn’t just leave them standing outside the door.

Paige Summers calmly poured two glasses of water and placed them on the coffee table. As she sat down opposite the two of them, she had a bad feeling.

’My head is starting to hurt even more!’

"I wasn’t expecting you. Is there something you need?"

Sean Raines picked up his glass of water to hide his mouth. ’Damn it! I was just a messenger, I really don’t want to get dragged into this kind of family reunion drama!’ "Um, Aunt Lowell wanted to talk to you."

Paige Summers’ questioning gaze shifted. "Ms. Lowell..."

Hearing this form of address, Wendy Lowell bit her lip hard and couldn’t stop herself from blurting out the words she had been holding in her heart. "Not Ms. Lowell, Paige. I... I’m your mother!"

Paige Summers’s pupils contracted slightly.

’So, the original owner’s mother...’

She found she wasn’t particularly surprised.

’Right. We look so much alike, her attitude has been so strange, and there’s no mother figure in my memories at all. Everything points to a greater than ninety-percent chance that what she’s saying is true.’

’The question is, what do I do now?’

She fell into a thoughtful silence.

Wendy Lowell started to panic. On the way over, she had imagined many possibilities—that Paige would throw herself into her arms in tears, or that she would angrily reject her. But she had never imagined this: this calm, indifferent silence.

"I can prove it! You really are my biological daughter!"

With fingers trembling slightly, she took out a few yellowed photos from her bag and pulled up a video on a well-preserved phone. It had been filmed in the hospital right after she gave birth. The video showed a weak Wendy lying in bed with a swaddled Paige, Dylan Summers—Paige’s father—standing by the bed and staring intently at them, and some relatives from both families.

Back then, the apocalypse had just begun, and chaos reigned everywhere.

The Lowell Family and the Summers Family were well-established families based in Kingsgate. The city had taken timely measures, so the situation there was still manageable. However, the two families had a huge disagreement about the future.

At the time, the Clan Leader of the Summers Family was Dylan Summers’s father, Ingram Summers. For reasons unknown, he’d been led to believe that a massive earthquake would soon strike Kingsgate, destroying over ninety percent of the city. He insisted on leading the entire Summers Family away to find a new path.

The Lowell Family, who were closely tied to them, were shocked and vehemently opposed the idea, insisting that no one from the Lowell family should be swayed. This included their daughter who had married into the Summers Family, as well as the child who carried half of the Lowell bloodline.

The relationship between the two families grew increasingly tense.

Her family had already brought her back home, and they only notified Dylan Summers after the child was born. When he arrived, he was a mix of anger and worry...

’And me?’

’I suppose I must have hated Dylan back then.’

’Because he’d so readily agreed with his father’s decision, giving no thought to my feelings as his wife. I had just given birth to our daughter after a ten-month pregnancy. How could I possibly endure a long journey, to say nothing of the Zombies lurking everywhere outside!’

’He did say something about protecting me with his life.’

’But he was just a scholar. What could he possibly do to convince me that we could actually reach our destination safely if we just recklessly set out?’

So, when Dylan Summers begged her to leave with him, saying he had prepared cars and bodyguards and would definitely not let her suffer, she refused him very calmly.

However, she had never expected Dylan Summers to be so insistent on taking Paige.

His temperament had always been gentle, but that time, he was unprecedentedly domineering. Faced with the obstruction of The Lowell Family, he didn’t hesitate to drop all pretenses and order his bodyguards to use force...

As Wendy’s memories unfolded, the video drew to a close.

The camera’s view had long since become the unmoving ceiling, likely because the person recording had put the phone aside.

But the audio was still clear.

Amid the chaos, Dylan Summers’s final, resolute voice came through, "This is my child! My only child! You want her to call another man ’dad’? Over my dead body!"

Paige Summers listened to this part in serious silence, a vague and indescribable sorrow welling up in her heart.

While watching the video, some reasons for the Summers Family’s decline suddenly surfaced vaguely in the original body’s memories.

It seemed her deceased grandfather had mentioned it before. After leaving Kingsgate, they had planned to head south and live in seclusion on an island. It was a rare sanctuary, and The Summers had already made arrangements, sending people ahead to guard it strictly. They were just waiting for the Clan Leader to arrive with the people and supplies—including food, weapons, and seeds—before they would immediately cut off all contact with the mainland and become self-sufficient. They could have stayed there for decades, even until the apocalypse was over.

However, The Summers never expected that they would be ambushed halfway by extremely powerful bandits, who killed all their bodyguards and many of The Summers, and stole their weapons, vehicles, and supplies...

Even so, the several dozen surviving members of the Summers Family did not give up. Although more and more of their relatives died along the way, they still managed to acquire a small amount of supplies and did everything they could to reach a coastal town, preparing to cross the sea and start over!

But reality was far crueler than they had imagined.

One day, two days, ten days... a month passed, but the ship that was supposed to pick them up never appeared. It was as if it had never existed.

Ingram Summers had to admit that the members of the Summers family stationed on the island were probably never coming.

The lack of food and water wasn’t what was terrifying. What was terrifying was the loss of hope.

The Summers were forced to wander, stumbling along just to survive.

In the end, they drifted to The Dead City.

Paige Summers raised a hand to cover her eyes.

’Seeing the Summers Family like this... it was like seeing the Summers Family from my past life.’

’Ingram Summers must have felt terrible when he talked about this, just like my grandfather. Every time he remembered how the Summers Family had fallen under his watch, he must have felt an indescribable sense of guilt.’

’No wonder both Ingram Summers and Dylan Summers treated the original owner of this body so incredibly well. Before they died, they practically wanted to lay every good thing they could find at her feet, always coddling her, unwilling to let her suffer any hardship.’

’They must have felt they had wronged her terribly.’

’If only they hadn’t been so determined to take her away back then...’

’But how were they wrong?’

’Since she had the surname Summers and the blood of the Summers Family flowed in her veins, she should naturally bear the fate that came with that name.’

’But they were still wrong.’

’They were wrong to raise the original owner to be so naive and ignorant. The moment she was no longer under their protection, she lost her life.’

’But I am not her!’

Paige Summers lowered her hand and looked directly into those tear-filled eyes. "I think you’re probably right. Biologically, you are likely my mother."