Sabrina Sherman, who was helping out at the shop, greeted me with a bright smile. "Nina, you're here! I was tidying up some clutter and found this box. Can you check if you still want it? If not, I'll throw it out to make space for the bread cutting machine."
After brushing the dust off the box, the first thing that caught my eye was Aiden's bold, confident handwriting.
To Nina Jones.
Sabrina immediately became interested. She playfully asked, "Wow, which man gave you this gift? The packaging is so exquisite. It looks like he put a lot of thought into it."
She eagerly looked at the signature at the end, but the moment she recognized the elegant handwriting, she froze in place. Even her voice stammered.
"Aiden Sanders? Do you mean the legendary prodigy with a PhD in physics? That super handsome astrophysics doctor who made it into international journals for discovering a minor planet?"
Sabrina's gaze towards me instantly filled with admiration. "Nina, who exactly are you?"
I opened the gift box and replied calmly, "I'm Aiden's ex-wife."
The one who was paranoid, who acted crazily. The one who was admitted to a psychiatric hospital because of delusions. The ex-wife, whom he considered the disgrace of his life.
Under Sabrina's persistent questioning, I sat down and began to tell her the story of Aiden and me.
When I first met him, he wasn't yet the legendary genius boy.
Everyone in the neighborhood saw Aiden as nothing more than a problematic introvert child with strange behavior.
He had no friends and no family to rely on. His parents were too busy fighting over their divorce, treating him like a ping-pong ball neither wanted.
I could still vividly remember that bone-chilling winter in this city, where Aiden huddled in the stairwell, shivering in nothing but a thin undershirt.
I felt sorry for him and brought him home.
Not long after, while playing a simple game, my father accidentally discovered his astonishing talent for math.
From that moment on, Aiden was changed.
He won the Math Olympiad at the age of ten and was accepted into the best university without taking any exams at fourteen. By sixteen, his published research was gaining international acclaim and his awards began to pile up.
The same couple who hadn't wanted him were now fighting over custody. Yet he still knelt before my father, pleading with all his heart.