Chapter 21 Chapter Twenty

When Mr. Harvey arrived at the tin house in Connecticut that night, it was already raining.He killed a young waitress here a few years ago and bought some trousers with tips from her pocket.As he walked, he thought, after such a long time, the corpse should have been decomposed by now, and there was indeed no strange smell around the iron house, but the door of the iron house was open, and he could also see that the ground inside the house had been turned over , he held his breath and walked towards the tin house nervously. The corpse was no longer visible in the place where the corpse was buried in the house. He lay down by the empty cave and fell asleep after a while.

For a while, I felt that I saw too many ghosts. To balance, I decided to observe more mortals.I noticed Ryan.Fenemont, like me, used to stealthily observe the young girls, old women, and all the other women, big and small, who gave him hope of life when he was not at work.Ryan and I saw a young girl in the shopping mall. Her childish dress and slender white legs were a bit out of tune. She looked delicate and charming, which deeply touched our hearts.We see old women staggering along on braces, insisting on dyeing their hair the color of their youth, but the hair color looks very unnatural.Middle-aged single mothers are busy buying groceries in the supermarket, but their children only know how to grab bags of candy from the shelves.Girls, old women, middle-aged women, these are real women.Every time I see poor women who are devastated, beaten up by husbands, raped by strangers, little girls persecuted by their biological fathers, every time I see them, I want to help.

Ryan sees these poor women all the time, they are often in the police station, and even if they are not in the station, he can detect their presence.He saw, for example, a lady in a store who, although she had no bruises on her face, behaved very coweringly, and spoke very quietly, as if afraid of disturbing others.There is also a girl he would see every time he went to visit his sister. Over the past few years, she has become thinner and thinner, and her cheeks have completely lost their luster. There are a pair of big eyes on her pale cheeks, her eyes are serious, full of helplessness and sadness.When he didn't see her, he was always worried about what happened; when he saw her, although he was relieved, he felt sorry for her.

For a long time, he couldn't find new evidence to add to my file, but in the past few months, the old file has added a few new leads.Police found another possible victim, Sophie.Cicetti, Sophie has a son named Love, and Mr. Harvey may have another alias, and besides that, Ryan has my Penn Stone.He touched the Pennsylvania stone in the evidence bag. My initials were engraved on the stone. He kept running his fingers over the letters. All they knew was that it was at the scene where another girl was killed. Apart from that, no matter how carefully they checked, they couldn't find any clues.

Once it was confirmed that it belonged to me, he wanted to give it back to my dad.Although it is illegal to do so, the police have never found my body. In the safe in the evidence room, there are only soaked textbooks, a few pages of nature class notes, a love letter in the notes, an empty Coke can, and an embossed letter. I don't think it's too much to ask Dad to keep something that belongs to me.He's made an inventory and he's kept all the evidence over the years, but this Penn stone is like nothing else, the Penn stone is my personal jewellery, and he wants to give it back to my family.

After his mother left, he had a girlfriend who was a nurse, and she saw a man named Jack on the hospital list.Shamon's patient, call Ryan immediately.Ryan originally planned to visit my dad in the hospital, and handed him the Penn State Stone. In Ryan's mind, this trinket was like a talisman, and my dad would surely recover soon after seeing it. I looked at Ryan and couldn't help but think of the metal barrels of poisonous liquid behind Hall's garage by the railway track.There is a mess next to the railway. Some companies leave the buckets filled with pollutants here. The buckets are sealed and buried in the soil. Over time, the contents of the buckets start to leak out. As time goes by, Ryan can’t suppress it. The feeling in my heart.In the years since Mom left, I've grown to sympathize with Ryan and have a modicum of respect for him.I knew he was just like me in that regard as he doggedly pursued the evidence and tried to answer some unexplained mysteries.

There was a little girl selling flowers outside the hospital. She tied daffodils into small bunches with purple ribbons on the green stems. I saw my mother buy all the daffodils in the little girl's hands. Nurse Elliott in the hospital saw her mother eight years ago. She still remembered who her mother was. As soon as she saw her mother's arms full of flowers, she immediately ran to help.She took out all the useless water bottles in the storage room, and then filled them with her mother, and filled the hospital room with daffodils while her father was sleeping.Nurse Elliot thought to herself, if a sad woman can be called a beauty, a lonely mother is more beautiful than before.

Earlier that night, Samuel, Lindsey, and Granny had brought Buckley home.Mom is not ready to see the hometown where she has lived for many years. She only has her father, the house, and the silent accusations from her children in her heart. These can be dealt with after a while.She didn't want to eat in the hospital's cafeteria, which was brightly lit. She felt that the hospital deliberately used bright lights to keep everyone awake, but the purpose was only to let patients and their families hear more bad news.The coffee in the restaurant that is as watery as water, the hard plastic chairs, and the elevators that stop on every floor also have the same purpose. The hospital wants to keep everyone awake, but the effect is still not obvious.So she walked out of the hospital, walked down the ramp next to the gate, and left the hospital.

It was dark outside. She remembered that she used to drive here in the middle of the night wearing a nightgown. Now there were only a few cars parked in the parking lot. She touched the sweater jacket her grandmother had left her and pulled it tighter. She walked across the parking lot, looking at what was in the dark car as she walked, trying to guess who was in the hospital.A stack of tapes next to the driver's seat in one car, a bulky baby seat in the front of the other, she liked to use to figure out who was in the car, and to her that was Like playing spy games at her parents' and friends' house as a child, she thought to herself: Agent Abigail call the control center!The game lowered her sense of alienation and made her feel less alone.I watched with my mother, ah, I saw a fluffy puppy toy, I saw a football, I saw a woman!A strange woman was sitting in the driver's seat. She didn't notice her mother looking at her at first, and then saw her mother.As soon as Mom saw her face, she turned her head and stared at the lights of the restaurant in the distance. Mom was planning to go to the restaurant for dinner. At this moment, she tightened her sweater and continued walking without looking back.Needless to say, she could also see the mood of the strange woman. Like her, the strange woman would rather go to any corner of the world than stay in this place.

There was a small lawn between the entrance to the hospital and the emergency room, and she stood on the lawn, wishing she had a pack of cigarettes handy.She got on the plane without thinking in the morning, Jack had a heart attack, and all she wanted was to get home, but now she didn't know what to do.What's next?How long would she have to wait before leaving again?Can she leave without saying goodbye again?She heard the door open and close in the parking lot, and the woman in the car got out and walked into the hospital. Everything in the restaurant seemed hazy, she sat down alone, and ordered a crisp fried steak, which she didn't seem to have seen in California.

Thinking about it, she suddenly noticed that the man sitting across from her was looking at her curiously, and she immediately observed him secretly. She would never do this in California. After returning to Pennsylvania, it almost became a reflex action.After I was murdered, as soon as she saw a suspicious stranger, she took a close look at it in her mind.Instead of pretending it was nothing, she might as well face the doubts and fears in her heart honestly. Precautions always make her feel at ease.The waiter brought her dinner and a cup of tea, and she concentrated on eating, sipping the metallic cold tea, and munching on the overcooked steak in the greasy flour crust.She thought to herself that she could only last a few more days at most. After returning home, she could see me everywhere, and even the man sitting opposite her might be my murderer. She finished the steak, paid the bill, and walked out of the restaurant with her head down. There was a bell on the door, and when she heard the bell, she felt a throbbing pain in her heart. She managed to keep her composure and crossed the street safely, but as she walked across the parking lot, her breathing became increasingly short of breath until she was almost out of breath.The strange woman's car was still parked there. The hospital hall was empty, and no one stayed in the hall, but she decided to sit here for a while, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. She decided to stay a few more hours until Dad woke up before leaving.After thinking it over, she felt a lot more relaxed, the burden on her shoulders suddenly disappeared, and she could escape to the ends of the earth again. It was past ten o'clock, it was getting late, she took the elevator to the fifth floor, and she was the only one in the elevator.As soon as she got out of the elevator, she found that the lights in the corridor on the fifth floor were dimmed. She walked past the nursing station, and there were two nurses on duty whispering gossip in low voices. As they spoke, one of the nurses couldn't help laughing out loud. Amidst the laughter, Mom pushed the door into Dad's ward, and the door closed tightly again in an instant. Only her. As soon as the door was closed, the room quietly seemed to enter a vacuum state.Even though I don't feel like I belong here and know it's best for me to leave, it's as if my feet are glued to the ground and I can't move. Dad slept deeply in the dark, only the fluorescent lamp on the hospital bed gave off a faint light in the room.Seeing Dad like this, Mom thought of that night eight years ago, when she stood next to him just like now, all she wanted was to leave this man. I watched her take my father's hand, and I thought that Linxi and I used to sit under the rubbings hanging on the stairs on the second floor. I pretended to be a knight who went to heaven, and Harold was the loyal dog of the knight. Linxi It's the knight's beloved wife, you are dead, how can I guard you for the rest of my life?Lindsay always likes to say that. Mom held Dad's hand and stayed quietly by the bed for a long time.She wanted to crawl on top of the new hospital bed next to her dad, it must have felt good, but then she knew she couldn't do that. She got closer, even though the room was filled with the smell of disinfectant, she could still smell the slight scent of green grass on her father's body.Dad had one of her favorite shirts, which she took with her in her suitcase when she left the house, and she sometimes wore it around her body when she arrived in California, just to smell a little of him.She never took the shirt outside, so his smell might last longer.She remembered missing him so much one night that she slipped her shirt over the pillow and hugged it tightly like an infatuated high school girl. Through the closed windows, she could still hear the sound of cars on the road in the distance, but there was almost no sound in the hospital, only the plastic shoes of the night nurses creaking in the corridor. There was a young girl at the winery who served the bar in the tasting area on weekends together, and when they were chatting together last winter, she told the young colleague that in a relationship between a man and a woman, one side is always stronger and the other side is weaker, She also argues: But this does not mean that the weaker side does not love the stronger side.The girl looked at her expressionlessly, but she completely ignored the other party's reaction.As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she was immediately taken aback by her own words. She suddenly realized that in her marriage relationship, she was the weak one.But why did she always feel that she was stronger than Jack all these years? She pulled the chair closer to the hospital bed and made herself as close to him as possible. She put her head lightly on his pillow and looked into his eyes silently. His eyelids kept trembling, obviously it was a sweet dream.All these years, she has fled far away, living thousands of miles away from home every day, but how could she still love the man in front of her so deeply?How could she still bury her love in her heart?Over the years, she deliberately kept the distance between the two of them far away. She jumped into the car and drove straight ahead; she pulled off the rear view mirror and made up her mind never to look back, but would this make him disappear from memory?They share a past, and their children, and does that just go away? Listening to his regular breathing, she gradually regained her composure, and sweet memories of the past quietly surfaced in her mind, and she didn't even feel a change in her mood.She thought of every room in the house, the rooms in which she had spent so much time trying to forget all these days, and now the past was coming up one by one, memories are like fruit in a jar, you don't remember to put it away. Where, but once you find it, the precipitated fruity aroma seems even more intoxicating.When they first got married, they loved each other so foolishly. After they had children, they worked hard to lay the foundation for this family and realize their dreams. The results of their hard work can be seen everywhere in the house. I am the most obvious painstaking effort crystallization. She touched the new wrinkles on her father's face, and lovingly stroked a strand of white hair on the side of his temple. Despite trying to stay awake, after midnight, my mother still fell asleep without knowing it.Before going to bed, she looked at Dad's face and tried to hold on to all the memories; holding on to them, when he woke up, she could wave goodbye in peace. She closed her eyes and fell asleep quietly beside him. I looked at my sleeping parents and gently hummed the nursery rhymes my father used to sing in their ears: stone and bone; snow and frost; Seeds, peas, tadpoles. Paths, branches, gentle breezes, we all know who suzy misses It started to rain around two o'clock, and the rain fell on the hospital, my old house, and my paradise.The rain also fell on the tin house where Mr. Harvey spent the night, making a sound like a drum.In the sound of rumbling rain, Mr. Harvey had a dream, in which it was not the girl whose body was removed and the police began to investigate, but Lindsey.Salmon.In his dream, Lindsey hurried through the neighbor's bushes, the number 5!5!5! on her back jersey.Flickering, as if to demonstrate to him.Every time he felt threatened, he would have this dream, and his life began to spin out of control in the flickering figure of Lindsay. When it was almost four o'clock, I saw my father opened his eyes. He felt his mother's warm breath, and he knew that his mother was asleep without looking.I wish Dad could hug Mom, and Dad thought so too, but he's too weak to lift his arms.After thinking for a while, he decided to show her love in another way.After I passed away, he thought about a lot of things, and these things often lingered in his mind, but no one except me knew what he was thinking. Now he decided to tell his mother exactly what was in his mind. He didn't want to wake her up, there was no sound in the hospital except the sound of rain.It seemed to him that the rain had been following him, the sky was always gray and the ground was wet, and he thought of Lindsay and Samuel standing at the door, smiling and dripping wet, running home in the rain just to keep him from falling. Worry.Over the years, he had often reminded himself to bring his attention back to the two children, and he had to keep thinking: Lindsey, Lindsey, Lindsey, Buckley, Buckley, Buckley. He watched the rain outside through the window, and the raindrops gathered in bright circles under the lights of the parking lot reminded him of the artificial rain in the movies when he was a child.He closed his eyes, his mother's steady breath touched his cheek lightly, and he felt very peaceful listening to his mother's breathing.Suddenly, there was a light flapping sound outside the window, and he heard the cry of a bird, but he couldn't see the bird from the hospital bed.He thought that there might be a bird's nest outside the window. The little birds were awakened by the sound of rain, but when they woke up, they couldn't see the mother bird. Thinking of this, he really wanted to go to rescue these poor little birds. He touched his mother's slender fingers. She was holding his hand tightly, but she let go of it unconsciously after falling asleep.He looked at her beside him and made a decision in his heart: no matter what happened next, this time he would let her go and let her pursue the life she wanted. Just then, I slipped into the room to be with my parents.Previously I had only hovered around them and never appeared in front of them. This time I loomed in human form and appeared in front of them. I shrink myself, the room is dark, I don't know if they can see me, although I have seen my father, mother, Ruth, Ray, sister, younger brother, and of course Mr. Harvey every day for the past eight and a half years , but I don't follow them twenty-four hours a day.I only know now that over the past few years, my father thought of me all the time.He gave me non-stop, making me feel the love from the world again and again.Under the care of my father's love, I have always been Suzie back then.Shamon, a great future is waiting for me to discover. I often think that if I don't make a sound at all, maybe I can hear you, he said softly: If I am quiet enough, maybe you will come back. Jack?My mother was half asleep and half awake and said: I am probably asleep. It's good to have you back.He said. Mom looked at him and all scruples disappeared, how did you do that?she asked. I have no choice, Abby.He said: What else can I do? Get away and start over.she says. Does this work? They didn't speak, I stretched out my hands, but the figure disappeared in an instant. Why don't you come and lie here? ．Dad said: The nurse on duty will come later, we still have a little time together, no one will chase you away. She didn't move. The people at the hospital were nice to me, she said: Nurse Elliott helped me with these flowers while you were sleeping. He looked up and tried to make out what flower it was, ah, a narcissus.He said. Suzy likes daffodils best. Dad showed a kind smile and said: Look, this is the right way, you face the reality and live bravely, giving her a bouquet of flowers is the beginning. Alas, it hurts to think about it.Mom said. Yes, he said: it was sad indeed. Mom carefully climbed onto the bed, her balance against the edge of the bed, and it was not easy to keep her balance, but they managed it, and they lay side by side on the hospital bed, staring at each other in silence. Was it okay meeting Lindsey and Barkley? Oh, it's so difficult.she says. After a moment of silence, he squeezed her hand. You look very different.He said. You mean I'm getting old? I watched Dad reach out and grab Mom's hair and tuck it behind her ears. After you left home, I fell in love with you all over again.He said. At this moment, I wish I was a mother.Dad didn't love her because of the past, or because of some traits that mom would never change. He loved her for everything and accepted her vulnerability and escape.Now that she is back beside him, at this moment before the sun rises, no one comes in to disturb them, he touches her hair lightly with his fingers, knowing that her blue eyes contain endless sadness, but he still doesn't care. stared at her in fear.All of these are signs of his love for her. Mom wants to say I love you, but she can't say it. will you stayhe asked. I will stay for a while. It was enough to hear her say that. Okay, he said: If people in California ask about your family, how do you answer? I frankly told them I had two kids, and then I whispered in my head that I actually had three kids.I feel sorry for Suzy every time I say that. Did you mention that you have a husband?he asked. She looked at him and said: No. Um.He sighed softly. Jack, I'm not coming back to tell lies.she says. So why are you back? My mom called me and she mentioned a heart attack on the phone and I immediately thought of your dad. Is it because I might die that's why you came back? Yes. You slept soundly just now, and he said: You didn't see her. see who? Someone just walked in and then went out, I think it was Suzie. Jack?Mom sighed softly, but her tone was not as defensive as before. Don't tell me you didn't see her. She let go of her guard. I saw her everywhere, and she felt so relieved when I said that, even in California, she was everywhere.I was driving past the school, students getting on and off the bus, or standing in front of the school, and I saw a girl with Suzie hair, but nothing like her face.The way some of the students look, or the way they walk, reminds me of her too.Every time I see a sister with a younger brother, or a pair of sisters who look alike, I think of Lindsey, Lindsey had a sister, and so did Buckley, but when Susie left, they were forever Lost big sister.Then I thought I left them behind too, I was sorry for them, for you, and even for my mother. Lindsey has been fine, he said: "She's strong.She felt a little pimple in her heart, but she could still hold on. I can see it. Well, what would you say if I told you that Suzy was in this room ten minutes ago? I'd say you're talking stupid again, but you're probably right. Dad reached out and touched the bridge of Mom's nose, and put his finger on her lips lightly.With the movement of his fingers, she parted her lips slightly.You have to lean down a little bit, he said: I am still a patient. I watched Mom and Dad hug and kiss, they kissed with their eyes open, Mom shed tears first, the tears flowed down Dad's cheeks, and Dad also sobbed softly.