Chapter 913: Chapter 913 Learning to Say No (3)_1
Howard Coleman’s hand, buttoning up, suddenly froze upon hearing the beautician’s question.
There wasn’t much change in the expression on his face.
That knife wound… it was the one he had taken for her.
Seeing Howard rooted to the spot, the beautician remained silent.
After a long while, Howard came back to his senses, silently finished buttoning up, and stood up. He donned his suit jacket, stepped out of the private room, and headed to the reception to hand over his card. He waited for the receptionist to complete the transaction and, facing the manager’s enthusiastic farewell, still bore a silent demeanor.
When he stepped out of the SPA Shop, it was already past nine in the evening. A night breeze was blowing, carrying with it a trace of the day’s lingering heat.
Howard didn’t hurry to his car; instead, he stood beside it, lit a cigarette, and halfway through smoking, he thought about the scar mentioned by the beautician. He couldn’t help but reach out to touch it, but then jerked his hand back as if electrocuted. He strode towards a trash bin to dispose of the cigarette butt. But because Howard rushed without watching where he was going, he collided with a passerby.
It was a woman, carrying a lot of things. When Howard bumped into her, her belongings scattered all over the ground.
Howard politely said, “Sorry.”
Then he squatted down to help the woman pick up the scattered items. However, when he saw the vegetables and a live fish floundering on the ground, he was struck as if by lightning, frozen in place on the ground, unable to move.
It wasn’t until the woman he had knocked over squatted down and picked up the lively fish that Howard snapped back to reality. He quickly gathered the rest of the vegetables into a bag, stood up, handed it to the woman, and said again, “Sorry.”
The woman, who had a good temper, shook her head with a smile at Howard’s repeated apologies, repeatedly saying it was okay.
As the woman took the bag from Howard, he couldn’t help but ask, “Are you buying so many groceries to cook for your family?”
“Not for my family, for my boyfriend,” the woman said with a smile as she turned away with her things. Perhaps because she had bought a lot, which was somewhat heavy, she walked with a slight lean, occasionally needing to switch hands.
Watching the woman’s retreating figure, Howard suddenly recalled the year he took a knife for Madeleine, stayed in the hospital, and the scene of Madeleine carrying groceries to the hospital cafeteria surfaced in his mind.
Back then, Madeleine, like this woman, was also carrying more than she could handle, struggling to walk, occasionally switching hands.
It had been three and a half years, but those past memories had not faded, instead, they had become even more vivid.
Howard felt his mind working like a slow-motion replay, vividly seeing Madeleine standing in the somewhat filthy hospital cafeteria, not knowing how to start dealing with the lively fish. However, in the end, she clenched her teeth, killed the fish, gutted and cleaned it.
Then, the next day when he woke up, the first thing the nurse handed him was a bowl of fresh fish soup.
Even after so long, he could remember the complexity of his emotions while drinking that bowl of fish soup.