Seizing the opportunity, he quickly asked, "How did your father pass away?"
"My dad was a construction worker. His death was an accident. He was hit by falling objects during construction and died unexpectedly."
She had been young at that time, but she already understood what death meant.
When her father had passed away, she cried a lot, every day accompanying her mother in her tears. That period was also the most difficult time she and her mother had gone through.
"You must have felt very sad in your heart," Rong Shaoze hugged her a bit tighter and said in a low voice.
So she had experienced the pain of losing a father at such a young age.
He had lost his father too, now, but the pain in his heart was surely not as severe as hers had been at the time.
Lin Xinlan nodded softly, "Mhm, I was very sad when I was little. It’s been many years since Dad passed away, and I didn’t dare to think about him; it would make me sad every time. But now I’m okay, the time has passed, and even the deepest pain fades away."
Thinking of her, as a child, so sad and distressed, made his heart ache too.
In the past, he didn’t love her, so her pain and tears meant nothing to him.
Now that he had fallen in love with her, his heart was tied to her, her pain was his pain, and even thinking about her past sufferings made him uncomfortable.
It turned out that to love someone was to love everything about them, to even care about all that she was. Whether it was her past, present, or future...
"What about your mother?" he asked again.
He wanted to know more about her, the more he understood, the closer he felt to her world.
"My mother is still here. After my father died, she worked in the fields to support my education. I started working outside after graduating from high school. We don’t have many relatives; our family is just like that, very ordinary."
Fearing he would continue to ask, she hurriedly asked him, "What about you, do you have any special relatives in your family?"
She was actually taking the initiative to ask about him!
The man was excited inside, and of course, he eagerly answered her.
"There’s no one special in my family either. However, I had a grandmother, but she passed away several years ago. I grew up with my grandmother, so my relationship with my father wasn’t very deep."
A look of misunderstanding appeared in Lin Xinlan’s eyes, "When you were little, didn’t your grandparents live with your parents?"
"It was my grandmother who didn’t live with them. She had problems in her relationship with my grandfather, so they lived apart. My grandmother was a proud and strong-willed woman. She went abroad to live by herself, vowing not to return unless my grandfather begged her to come back. Later, she took me abroad, and I lived with her for ten years."
Lin Xinlan was surprised. Rong Shaoze’s grandparents had been separated for a long time.
"Did your grandfather ever ask her to come back?" As a woman, what she cared most about were their relationship issues.
Rong Shaoze’s eyes darkened as he shook his head, "No, my grandmother died without my grandfather ever laying eyes on her again."
"Why? What happened between them? Why was your grandfather so heartless toward her?" she asked, astonished.
What issues between a husband and wife could be so insurmountable that they ended up never seeing each other again until death?
Rong’s father had an affair, yet when he was on his deathbed, Rong’s mother forgave him.
So why wouldn’t Rong Shaoze’s grandfather see his grandmother, not even once when she was dying?