Eric stubbornly said, "Andrew, I can listen to you on other things, but not this. This is the first time I'm meeting this woman. Never mind whether what she's saying is true or not, but even if it is true, so what? You heard it yourself. I'm just a product of her venting and taking revenge on someone else.

"Put simply, I'm just an extra, pathetic little creature. Under those circumstances, there were thousands of possibilities that I could've died at any moment. I could've been killed by someone, or abandoned and left to die."

He continued, "But what did she do? She handed over gold and silver treasures, just material things, and nothing else beyond that. You want me to acknowledge her? On what grounds? I have parents. My mom died young, and my dad is right here. So I'm not lacking parents, and I'm not going to waste my energy on some melodramatic mother-son reunion with her."

Jerome said, "Eric, it's already a fact. You can't deny it. Madam Baxter's situation at the time was compl