CHAPTER - 34 Grace tries to kill herself

"No, no... I just want to know where my daughter is. Please don't do anything to them," Mason quickly added. 

“What happened? What did he say?” Millie asked him while holding her thumping chest.

“Yes, mom! She was alive when she left the hospital.” Mason replied.

"What should I do now mom? What should I do? I am excited to meet her," He almost started to jump up and down.

As promised, Robert found Dina’s address and messaged him in a couple of hours.

“Mom, I must leave now. I will go and bring her back home.” Mason announced and almost ran outside to his car.

“Mason, wait! No! I will go. But not now. We have to find Tina first. Anyway, if any of us leave right now, then Grace may start to doubt us. We still haven’t told her about Tina being missing.” Millie reminded him.

“But mom…” He hesitated.

It took them already long enough to know that his other daughter is still alive. But now how could he control his heart and delay further in meeting his daughter?

“Listen to me, Mason. The current situation of this home is not good for Dina. If she comes here then we don’t know what she had to face. Grace might not accept her. Instead of giving her the happiness that she deserves, we will only make her feel distressed. All I ask is for you to wait for a few more days. Trust me, we will figure out a solution for all our problems,” Millie tried to convince him.

Even though he was not fully convinced, he knew that what Millie said was not false. After bringing Dina here, he might not be able to protect her properly. At the same time, he had to search for his missing daughter, Tina as well.

He held his head and dropped his tired body on the sofa. This is more than he could take for a day. He rubbed his aching head and leaned against the backrest. 

“Go get some rest, Mason. I will come back later. I don’t know if you could sleep, but I think you need to rest at least a few hours before you could join the search party for finding Tina.” Millie said and stood up to leave.

“Yes, mom. I am having a severe headache. I will lie down a little bit, but please wake me up once the search party comes back,” He requested her. 

Once she nodded her head, he felt reassured. Then he pulled his worn-self towards the bedroom. When he entered the room, he noticed that Grace was not inside. He didn’t mind about finding where she was right now and neither did he care about her.

He still couldn’t believe that she would go and fix their daughter’s marriage without consulting with him or anyone else. Every time she said, Tina was her daughter, he had to try very hard to stop himself from saying anything hurtful to her.

‘How could she not understand that Tina was my daughter as well. I also have equal responsibility for our daughter's life. Even if I could forgive Grace for not discussing Tina’s marriage with me, What about Tina? Isn’t she the one who will be living with that man? Does she not have any choice to choose the one she likes?’ He felt disgusted with his wife’s overbearing behavior.

He laid down on the mattress and closed his eyes. But his heart was not ready to relax and neither was his brain. For the first time, after marrying Grace, he did feel regret. He didn’t want to think about separation yet but something was already broken within himself. And it’s now impossible to stick it together anymore. 

…

Days passed and it became more than a week after Tina went missing. Still, no one could find any clue about her whereabouts. The police department pulled the search team back. The chief of police told Mason that they would keep the case open. But right now they had other cases to handle and they could not spend their resources on this missing case alone.

Mason almost lost all his hopes and didn’t know what he must do. Even though the news had not been spread out in the open, everyone started to wonder where Tina had disappeared all of a sudden. 

Grace was the only one who was kept in the dark. Other than fighting with Mason and Grace to find out about the location of Tina, she did nothing else. She didn’t even go out much and neither was she interested in doing anything other than finding where they hid Tina. 

“So when is Tina coming back?” Grace asked him, holding his shirt collar impatiently.

“Soon,” Mason replied while turning his eyes away from her face.

“Soon? When? There are hardly any days left for the marriage. Bring her back, Mason. Just because you try to hide her doesn’t mean you can stop this marriage from happening,” Grace warned him.

Mason pulled his shirt collar from her hands. He left the room without glancing even once at her. Grace was not hurt by how he was behaving. All she cared about was for her daughter to come and get married to Adrian.

Mason didn’t even ask her who the bridegroom was as he was not expecting his daughter to get married to him. 

Just three days before the wedding date, when Mason came home late at night, as usual, he saw that the bedroom light was still on. He got frustrated and didn’t want to hear the same question again and again from Grace. He was about to leave the home but something stopped him.

He slowly walked towards their bedroom and saw that all the things in the room were scattered and broken. In the middle of the room, Grace’s body laid on the cold floor with a pool of blood around her wrist.

“Grace!” He shouted and rushed towards her.

She opened her eyes, slowly and looked at him.

“I will take you to the hospital right away. Nothing will happen to you,” He said and lifted her.

“No…” Grace screamed and pushed him away.

“It’s all your fault. You separated me from my daughter. I will never forgive you, even if I die. I will haunt you forever for what you did to me and my daughter,” She wildly punched him and tried to move away from him.

“Grace, listen to me. You are bleeding. If we rush to the hospital now…” Mason couldn’t even finish his sentence when Grace lifted a broken shard of the glass piece and pierced her other hand.

“Ok... Ok... Stop! I will do everything you say. Stop hurting yourself. I promise... I promise. If you want to get our daughter married to the person you wanted to, then she will. I will bring her back and the wedding will go on. Please… Please stop.. Don’t do it… Please… I promise... I promise…” Mason lost all his strength and started to beg.

All his resolution disappeared the minute he saw his wife bleeding and hurting herself. He already had a very bad experience with her tantrum once and he knows how bad it is.

Only when Mason begged for several minutes and asked for forgiveness, did Grace stop poking herself. She looked at him with blood-red eyes and asked,

“You promised! If my daughter doesn’t come home soon, then I will die.” She muttered under her breath and lost her consciousness.

Mason immediately rushed outside the house carrying her in his arms. He placed her on the car's backseat. The car zoomed towards the hospital. On the way, he informed his parents and his mother-in-law, Millie.

They all rushed to the hospital and didn’t know how to comfort Mason. Abel felt that his daughter-in-law had overdone it this time. He shook his head in disappointment. 

Mason pulled Millie aside and spoke in a low tone.

“We need to bring Dina back and make her pretend as Tina.”

“What? NO! Have you gone mad?” Millie shook her head in contempt.

“Mom, there is no other way. She said she will die if we don’t allow Tina to marry that guy whom she chose. You know how she is! Once she fixes her mind on something then she would not listen to anyone until she achieves it. If we want to keep Grace alive then we have to do it,” Mason said.

“Mason, Dina doesn’t know about us. What makes you so confident that she will agree to your request? Why would she even meet us? The minute she comes to know that we abandoned her in the hospital, she would be heartbroken. Right now, she is living happily with her mother. She has a life there and I even think it is better if we don’t bring Dina into this mess of our family,” Millie tried to advise him and change his mind.

“What are you both discussing so secretly?” Kylie asked.

“We found Tina. But…” Mason said without much thought.