Chapter 4
I booked a fight
Six hours in the air, followed by a three–hour drive, brought me back to the remote town in Southtown.
They say that as people age, they long to return to their roots.
But in truth, even those without a home to return to can deeply miss their hometown.
Even if that hometown no longer holds a single relative.
I rented a small courtyard house in town.
The local dialect was both familiar and strange. I had left when I was young and had lived in Northville ever since.
Thad long forgotten how to speak it.
Fortunately, the neighbor in the adjacent courtyard was also from out of town, just having arrived before me.
One day, when I couldn’t understand the local grandmother’s dialect while buying vegetables, he came to my rescue.
The next day. I made com fritters to thank him for his help.
That’s when leamed he was an artist who had come here for inspiration.
He looked like he had just graduated from college, exuding an air of youthful enthusiasm.
Far from the people and affairs of Northville.
in this simple environment, I suddenly realized that I was only 25 years old.
Yet because of my time with the Lockwood family, I had always carried myself with the demeanor of Mrs. Lockwood.
That somehow a ways felt old beyond my years.
I bought flowers from the street and filled my small courtyard with roses.
A tiny rocking chair sat beside the flower bed.
Though modest, everything was just as I wanted it.
The Lockwood family garden was full of yellow roses that Rose Turner loved, with an expensive piano in the glass greenhouse.
Carter Lockwood had designed it especially for her back then, and no one else was allowed to touch it.
That year, when Grandmother wanted someone to remove those roses,
Carter Lockwood flew into a rage.
“If the roses are gone, I won’t be coming back to this house either.”
No one ever mentioned it again, and both Rose and those roses became taboo subjects in the Lockwood household.
