He Gave Me Hearing, Then Taught Me What Silence Really Means novel Chapter 45

Beatrice was uneducated, having only finished elementary school. She couldn't fully comprehend the weight of that question.

She was just frantic, her face flushing with panic. "How are you supposed to get married now? What do you expect me to do? How am I supposed to face anyone?"

Juniper gave a hollow smile, pulled her collar tight against her neck, and walked straight toward the building entrance.

"Juniper! Juniper! June!"

Toward the end, Beatrice's voice softened into a desperate plea. "At least take the food inside."

Juniper didn't hear her, and her footsteps never paused.

Beatrice stood alone in the courtyard. Night fell, and eventually, Yara happened to walk by. Seeing the figure sitting by the curb, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her.

"Mrs. Lane?"

Beatrice's arms and legs were covered in mosquito bites. Seeing Yara, she let out a breath of relief. "I brought some things for June. Could you take them up for her?"

Yara was from the same hometown, so she nodded. "Of course. Do you want to come up and sit for a bit?"

"No, she doesn't want to see me."

She placed the bag of wild mushrooms on top of the sack of rice. "You have to eat the mushrooms while they're fresh, or they'll go bad."

She patted the sack of rice, her voice dropping to a confused mumble. "Yara, I didn't get much schooling. Just now, June asked me if pain was the only thing our umbilical cord ever transmitted. What did she mean by that?"

The surroundings instantly fell dead silent. Even the buzzing of the mosquitoes seemed to vanish.

Yara swallowed hard, looking at Beatrice's incredibly earnest expression.

She forced a polite smile. "It's probably just a random saying. It doesn't mean anything. Well, Mrs. Lane, I'm going to head upstairs now."

A relieved smile instantly bloomed on Beatrice's face, and she wiped at her eyes. "That's good. Go on up, then. The rice is a bit heavy, so take your time."

Yara struggled to lug the heavy sack of rice and the mushrooms all the way up to their apartment. When she opened the door, the living room was dark. Was Juniper already asleep?

She closed the front door, shoved the mushrooms into the fridge, and then walked over to knock on Juniper's bedroom door.

"I ran into Mrs. Lane downstairs just now. She asked me to bring up the rice and mushrooms. She probably took a bus back by now. This rice is so heavy, I have no idea how she carried it all by herself."

Juniper didn't touch the bag of mushrooms. Instead, she started frying herself an egg.

"Juniper, if this were years ago, I'd tell you that children shouldn't hold grudges against their parents. But now that I've seen the real world and taken my own fair share of hits, I don't want to say that garbage anymore."

She walked over and gently patted Juniper on the shoulder. "Your eyes are super puffy. Did you secretly cry again last night?"

Ever since they were young, Juniper had a habit of crying silently by herself, then stubbornly insisting she was fine—only for her swollen, red-rimmed eyes to completely betray her.

Gripping the handle of the frying pan, Juniper's voice was hoarse. "Every time I start to hate my mom, my brain automatically flashes back to all the good things she did for me. Why couldn't she just be awful all the time? That way I could hate her with complete justification, hate her thoroughly. Her kindness and her cruelty are so tangled together that the second I try to hate her, the guilt starts eating me alive."

Guilt brought pain. It felt as though hating her parents was a cosmic sin, leaving her with no choice but to turn all that hatred inward and despise herself instead.

She hated her terrible luck. She hated that her ear was the thing that got damaged.

Yara pulled a bottle of juice from the fridge, deliberately changing the subject. "Where did you go the night before last? A work trip?"

Family trauma was just too heavy. The more they talked about it, the more suffocating it got.