Celestine stared in disbelief at the face she had longed to see for so many years.
The woman seemed to think she had misheard when Celestine didn’t move.
After expertly placing the plastic bottles she had collected into the back of her tricycle, she prepared to drive away.
Celestine snapped back to reality and instinctively started to chase after her, but a bus blocked her path.
By the time she hurried around it, the woman had already driven her tricycle far down the road.
She ran, shouting after her.
She could never mistake her mother’s face.
But why would her mother leave after seeing her?
Tears streamed down Celestine’s face.
But her legs couldn’t keep up with the vehicle. She stumbled and fell in the middle of the road, watching as the tricycle slowly disappeared into the dusk.
Celestine took a long time to recover, her thoughts a tangled mess.
She had clearly seen her parents buried together.
Why would her mother suddenly appear here?
Celestine clutched her throbbing head.
After a long while, a pair of headlights shone on her.
A man’s figure, silhouetted against the light, strode toward her with long steps.
Only after confirming that the person huddled by the wall was her did Gideon let out a silent sigh of relief.
Celestine had been out of contact since the afternoon.
When Cynthia mentioned it to him, he had thought it was nothing.
But as the sky grew darker and their repeated calls to Celestine’s phone went unanswered, a sense of unease grew stronger within him.
Gideon’s tightly furrowed brow softened with a pang of heartache when he saw the tear stains on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
He slowly bent down, his thumb gently brushing her cheek.
Celestine belatedly felt the warmth of his touch and looked up.
The moment she saw Gideon, her tears began to fall in large drops.
“I think… I saw my mom.”

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