The old man’s hands didn’t know whether to tremble, "Why? Why does she look so much like her?" He had always been clean and honorable, and his wife was an only daughter, how could there be someone who looked so much like her?
Su Hai followed behind, watching the comparison, shocked. He finally understood why the old man had reacted so abnormally the first time he saw Sheng Ning, although his father had covered it up well, how could he have deceived him?
"Little Hai, why does someone look so much like your mother? We don’t have a granddaughter in our family! Your maternal grandfather’s family doesn’t have other siblings either. The first time I saw this girl at Old Chen’s house, I thought she looked very familiar, as if I had seen her somewhere before, and I thought it was just my old eyes playing tricks on me. But now, after comparing, they’re simply too alike, Ningning without her work uniform is the spitting image." The old man was puzzled beyond words.
He was getting on in years, and sometimes his memory was not so good, often forgetting people’s names. But regarding Sheng Ning, he had only met her once and remembered her name.
He liked to mention her a few times when he was idle at home, and sometimes when he went to Old Chen’s house to visit, he liked to ask when Ningning would come.
Su Hai’s pupils constricted, and he wished he could give Su Yun, that chief culprit, a severe beating. Keeping it a secret from the family for so many years, and without their knowledge, making the old man keep her in mind, was truly unforgivable.
"Dad, please don’t get too worked up," Su Hai tried to soothe the old man’s emotions, and after letting him sit down he said, "Actually, there’s something I haven’t had the chance to tell you."
"Speak!" The old man’s wise eyes fixed on him, making Su Hai unreasonably guilty.
"Cough cough..." He looked at Su Huai’an, planning to ask the kid to leave, but he just sat there unmoving.
It was clear he wanted to be involved, not to avoid.
"Alright, just say it! There’s no need to avoid Huai’an. Our family’s future all lies with Huai’an; we don’t need to hide anything from him." Of his two sons and one daughter, it was his eldest son’s child, this grandson, who most pleased his heart. The smart younger son was nearly forty and still unmarried.
The future of the Su family all depended on Huai’an.
"Yes!" Su Hai sighed in his heart, apologizing silently to Su Yun, for having to disgrace himself in front of his nephew, but he couldn’t be blamed.
He cleared his throat and said, "My sister, when she was a ’sent-down youth’ in the countryside, gave birth to a daughter."
"What did you say? Say it again." The old man hadn’t moved from his chair, his fierce expression frightening Su Hai into silence.
Su Huai’an supported the old man, silently staring at Su Hai, a sharpness in his eyes that made Su Hai feel for the first time that he was this disgraceful in front of his nephew.
"My sister had a daughter while she was a ’sent-down youth,’ not long after she was born... she just came back... and left the child in the countryside." The specific details, Su Hai was too embarrassed to say.
Could a mother actually do such a thing? He felt disgraced even as her brother.
After all, the Su family had always shown special favor to Su Yun for many years because of his mother.
Su Hai was the youngest in the family, and his mother had died in difficult labor trying to give birth to him. Even under the risk of losing her own life, she fought to deliver the child.
Such noble maternal love, and the hardships as a woman had deterred the men of the Su family from mention, filled them with much guilt. For their only daughter Su Yun, they showed much preferential treatment.
As a result, her actions had completely disgraced their mother’s memory.