try begging
Grace, who was flipping through the newspaper while eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant, stopped.
[Obituary: Count Leon Winston dies at age 31]
At that moment, the scene before her eyes changed. She was at a funeral parlor.
"Ellie, what are you doing here?"
Grace ran over to Ellie, who was standing blankly in front of the coffin in mourning clothes. The child turned around and stared at her with accusing eyes, speaking coldly.
"Mom killed Dad."
No, Ellie, that's not what Mom said.
Ellie, who had been coldly watching her as she smiled like an idiot, unable to speak honestly, raised her hand and pointed to the coffin.
"I, I don't want to see."
As she stood there, something suddenly pushed her away. Grace staggered toward it, and the moment her eyes fell on the wide-open coffin, her breathing stopped.
The man lying in the coffin was a boy.
Yeah, it's the boy who died. The man didn't die.
The boy opened his eyes wide at the moment when he was denying reality by making absurd arguments. As if to refute her stubbornness, the boy's eyes were not the same as those of the summer night when Grace had abandoned him while shouting cruel words.
It was the same sad eyes that stared at Grace, who was cruelly abandoning me again, on a winter night when ash fell like snow.
"You killed him."
The moment the boy opened his mouth and spoke in a man's voice, Grace took a deep breath and escaped into a sleep of consciousness. When she opened her eyes, she saw a ceiling bathed in dawn light.
"ha...."
Grace, who took a deep breath without realizing it, turned her head to the side. Fortunately, Ellie was asleep, holding her stuffed rabbit, oblivious to the world.
She untied the ribbon that tied my daughter's and my hands and quietly got up. She put on only her coat over her sweat-soaked pajamas and went out of the hotel room, her heart pounding as if it was going to burst.
The small lobby of the cheap hotel was decked out in New Year's decorations the day before New Year's Day. Grace went into the phone booth next to the front desk. She gave the operator a number she had somehow memorized. Little did she know that she would be calling the number every day to get reports about me.
[Yes, this is Lieutenant Edward Campbell.]
When the other person answered the phone, Grace opened her lips, but as always, she hesitated, not knowing what to say.
[The Major...]
But the person on the other end of the line, who already knew who was calling and why, answered before I could even ask.
[You haven't woken up yet.]
The man had been unconscious for a week due to excessive loss of blood. At least that meant he was still alive.
[As I said yesterday, how about coming to Winsford? If you tell me where you are, I will send someone for you.]
When Grace didn't respond, Campbell began to plead for her safety as if his life depended on it.
[The culprits have not been caught yet, so it is dangerous. Miss Riddle and her daughter are also targets of their assassination, so you must prioritize safety.]
Nancy, Fred's older sister and Dave Wilkins' daughter, escaped with a gunshot wound. The other remnants, except for the one the man had shot, were all missing.
[We will protect you thoroughly, so please...]
"I'll call you again tomorrow."
Grace, who had finished her business, hung up the phone as soon as she finished her first words.
Back up to her hotel room, Grace laughed at herself. It was funny how she ran away and then called every day.
Come to think of it, that night was the same. She took an ambiguous attitude toward the man, neither telling him to die nor to live. She abandoned him and ran away, but she found the bodyguard and told him where the man was.
Even if I stayed by that man's side, what would change? I'm not God. I can't save a dying man.
No one was blaming me, but I was making excuses. Grace returned to her room and lay down next to Ellie, staring blankly at the ceiling, lost in thought.
Two days is a long stay. I think I'll be tracked by Campbell, so I'll have to move to another city today.
Grace couldn't understand why Campbell, a royalist nobleman and soldier, would beg her to protect Ellie and herself. It would be in his best interest if his superior's rebel government disappeared without a trace. Given his close ties to the Winstons, his superior's downfall would mean his own.
'perhaps....'
While the man was still alive, she would pretend to protect him, but the moment he died, she might hand her over to the military as a rebel. She never expected that her biological father, whom she only knew by name, would save her.
Besides, to Count Winston, Ellie would be a disgrace that needed to be eliminated. Without him and without Grace, there would be no one left in this world to protect Ellie.
Now I can't trust anyone but that man. It was a shocking and sad thing that that man became the only person I could trust.
"ha...."
Grace tied the ribbon that she had untied around her wrist to wake up Ellie, who was tossing and turning, and brushed her swollen face away. She had no idea what to do next. Her future was as uncertain as that man's.
Beep-.
A black locomotive slid into the opposite platform, belching white steam. Grace, sitting on the bench, pointed to the train with her hand.
"Wow, here comes the train. Chug chug chug. Ellie, try chug chug chug."
"... Chichi... Boom boom."
Ellie, sitting on her lap, reluctantly imitated the sound of a train when asked. She was a child who loved trains, but she was indifferent. She didn't even raise her head, and was just busy tying a white handkerchief around Muffin's leg.
"Is this a hospital game? Is Ellie a doctor?"
Ellie nodded silently. Since that day, the child has become less talkative. It has also become difficult to see her smile.
"Shall we go buy some chocolate?"
Only then did the child make eye contact and nod vigorously. Grace led the child to a convenience store in the middle of the platform.
Only when I put a milk chocolate bar the size of my face in her hand did the child's face brighten. Grace stroked Ellie's head with a bitter smile. In just one night, the child went from being a princess with a real crown to being penniless, without even a fake crown.
Ellie never got to open the Christmas present she had been waiting for. She didn't have time to buy her another present. I felt so sorry for Ellie, who must have had the worst Christmas of her life.
But the child never asked why he wasn't getting a present. He never said a word about his father or that night.
As Ellie's tiny hands began to open the chocolate wrapper, Grace turned her eyes to the newsstand.
A bloody Christmas again after three years, the hamster wheel of revenge... .
When I saw headlines that treated someone else's tragedy as light gossip, I felt like screaming.
Grace took a deep breath. She had been avoiding anything with the name Winston on the front page, so the only thing worth buying was a gardening magazine that had nothing to do with her.
"Ellie?"
After paying for the magazine and chocolate, I turned around to see Ellie crouching in front of a pillar three steps away. What was she so absorbed in? Grace approached and grimaced as soon as she saw something on the floor in front of the pillar.
It was a mouse. It was soaked in dark red blood, as if it had been bitten to death by a cat.
"Ellie, don't look at this."
Grace picked up the child who was staring blankly at the dead rat. The child looked up at her and asked ominously calmly:
"Dad, you lost a lot of blood like that too. Right?"
Only when she first mentioned the man did Grace realize why Ellie had bandaged the leg of the stuffed rabbit. The child knew exactly where her father had been shot. She was imagining herself treating it.
The pity for the child seemed to squeeze her heart. At the same time, the shameful feelings she had for the man were tearing at her heart, which was already unidentifiable.
Grace just smiled as if in a dream in front of the child who was staring at her and demanding an answer.
Yes. Your father has lost so much blood that he might die in a moment. Maybe tomorrow's newspaper will be full of your father's obituary.
I couldn't say such horrible things. Grace's mind went blank at the thought of such horrible things.
"Ellie... ."
Grace, barely able to muster up her voice, lied.
"It was a dream. It was a nightmare."
I foolishly hoped that people would forget about that night.
Grace's wish did not seem to come true easily. That evening, as her ominous premonitions came true, Ellie's condition deviated from her earnest wish.
Clang!
Grace accidentally broke the glass cup.
"ah!"
Ellie was hurriedly trying to clean it up, afraid that she might step on it and get hurt, and ended up cutting her hand. Grace held the bleeding finger and went into the bathroom.
The child, who had been quietly sitting on the bathroom rug playing house with a muffin, as she had been told to do while she cleaned up the glass, stared at her and then stood up.
"Ellie, you can't go out of the bathroom."
Grace closed and locked the door and washed her hands at the sink. The child, who would normally have worried and asked if she was a mother, was quiet, but did not notice anything suspicious. When the bleeding stopped, Grace wiped her hands and turned around, and her heart sank.