Chapter 216: The Joyful Moments of Life.
"Dad, I'm sure there's nothing to worry about. David will deal with everything himself," Jun parked the car next to Elena's home.
Mr. Lee, as soon as he heard about the arrest of his son-in-law, could not remain calm and, having solved the main important issues in the company, he went home to his daughter.
"Jun, I have no doubt about David's abilities, but that doesn't mean that we should sit still and pretend that it doesn't concern us. The family exists in order to support each other, regardless of circumstances," Chen got out of the car and headed to Elena's house.
The weather today was surprisingly wonderful, not that it was particularly different from previous days, but it somehow seemed to Chen that it was precisely today that the light breeze was warmer and the sun was shining brighter.
The door to the house was slightly open and the man did not bother to ring the doorbell. He went inside and froze on the spot, such a familiar and forgotten aroma of cinnamon and fresh pastries greeted him on the threshold of a spacious living room.
"Dad, why did you stop?" Jun asked his father, who was standing at the entrance and not moving. "Wow, is Elena cooking something? Mmm, what a flavor!" The young man squeezed forward and inhaled a mouth-watering smell with a full chest.
Chen looked at his son with a slightly sad smile, the latter was too small at that time to remember how he hopped with joy every time his mother baked his favorite cinnamon rolls. Even now, after more than twenty years, his reaction was still the same.
"Ahaha, imagine, and then he...," Elena went into the living room with an unknown girl's arm, both recklessly laughing at something, apparently so interesting, that they did not immediately notice two men standing on the doorstep.
"D-dad?!" The girl was surprised and with slight bewilderment looked at her companion, Lina nodded her head, turned around and went back to the back yard, where the barbecue area was.
"Ahaha, dad, why didn't you call and tell me that you are coming?" Elena hugged Chen and winked at Jun.
"Darling, your words make me sad. Since when should I make an appointment to meet with my beloved daughter?" Mr. Lee frowned, simulating a slight resentment. Eh, this little girl grew up too fast, even now he wanted to pamper her as a child, despite the fact that she herself had a small son. In the eyes of Chen, both Elena and Sean were at the same level.
"Hehe, of course, you can come anytime, my beloved daddy, muuah," the daughter kissed the man on the cheek and hugged him even more tightly.
"Hey hey, El, what smells so good? Have you cooked something?" Jun wedged into the inseparable duo of daddy-daughter.
"Oh, about this...," Elena scratched her head, thinking about how best to present this shocking news to her family, but over the past two hours of hard thought, she has not come up with a solution to this non-standard problem.
"There is such a thing, in general, dad, you just do not worry, okay?"
"Darling, you understand that if you tell me not to worry, this is what makes me worry even more. Where is David? Is he OK?" Chen asked with undisguised anxiety in his voice. The younger Anderson was like a son to him, however, the whole Anderson family turned out to be very nice and friendly people.
"Yes, David is fine, he left for the office. Daniel and the children and their cousin Nick left for the amusement park in the morning, so they should be home soon," Elena reassured the man, "We have guests and I would like to introduce you to one of them."
The daughter squeezed the man's palm and led him to the back yard. Chen noticed Armand talking to the girl they had seen before. The couple was standing aside and discussing some personal things, considering how close they were standing to each other.
On the other side, next to the gazebo, another woman was standing and cooking something on the grill. She had her back turned to them, and the man did not see her face, but the silhouette of this woman seemed painfully familiar to him.
She was humming a tune in Chinese and waving her hands to the beat of her own music. The woman was so passionate about what she was doing that she did not feel a pair of gazing eyes, looking at her from the back.
Chen, as if guided by some unknown force, took a step forward and slowly walked toward the woman. With each step, he heard her voice more distinctly, and with each step, his heart was shrinking more and more.
He was afraid to believe his ears, afraid that the absurd thoughts that arose in his head would turn out to be just an illusion, which his soul longed to turn real.
That was until she turned around.
Liu Yang felt an incomprehensible tension and cut off her melody, the barely audible rustle of grass behind the woman testified that someone was walking in her direction. The steps were unhurried but confident. A breeze ran through her hair and brought to the woman a barely sensible fragrance of male cologne. YangYang squeezed the tongs she used during cooking.
She would not have confused this cologne with any other. He still enjoyed the fragrance she gave Chen on their first wedding anniversary. It was so long ago, and although she was not near her beloved man for many years, her gift was hugging him instead of her.
Liu Yang closed her eyes, took a deep breath and turned around.
Chen felt his whole world stop at that moment. She stood opposite him at arm's length and looked so real that he was afraid to believe that all this was actually happening.
"Dad!"
"Chen!"
Elena and Jun rushed to the man when he suddenly grabbed his heart and swung to the side.
"Oh Lord, Chen, where does it hurt? Do you feel bad? Elena, call an ambulance! But no, wait, we have Lina. Lina, over here, please!" YangYang began to examine her husband in a hurry, afraid that something might happen to him. The man sat down on the ground, unable to stand on his feet.
Chen grabbed his wife's trembling hand and pressed it to his chest. Tears came to his eyes as he felt the warmth radiating from Liu Yang's palm. She was real, she was not the illusion that he had imagined on lonely nights for two decades.
"Is that really you? Doesn't it seem to me? Tell me this is not a dream," he whispered, squeezing her palm even harder, afraid that she might disappear into the air like all his illusions before.
"This is not a dream, I'm here, I'm next to you," the woman whispered in response. YangYang hugged her husband and pressed his head to her chest.
"Oh my God, it's really you," Chen sobbed in a loud voice, not embarrassed by his tears when he heard a rhythmic beat of the heart in the woman's chest. Jun, in utter bewilderment, looked from his father to the woman, until he finally realized the situation.
"M-Mom?" the young man said in a trembling voice. All of this was too shocking to be true.
Liu Yang raised her head and looked lovingly at her son, "Junny, my boy, you have grown so much. Mom is proud of you."
"Mama! Mommy!" A young man, like a small child, hung on his parent's neck and burst into tears even louder than his father.
Elena stepped aside, not wanting to interfere with the long-awaited family reunion. In the woman's chest were mixed feelings of joy and sadness, fullness and loneliness at the same time.
She turned and wandered into her room. The house was quiet, the children were in the amusement park, the adults were outside, and the only companion for the woman at the moment was the hands of the clock hanging on the wall, which in their monotonous run measured the non-stop flow of time.
Previously, she did not notice how quickly the time flew by from the moment when she last saw her mother. And only now, looking at Lee's happy family, Elena felt how much she had missed her mother all this time.
The woman ran her fingers through the photograph Liu Yang gave her. Two young girls, about sixteen or eighteen, looked with happy smiles into the lens, capturing one of the joyful moments of their lives.
Mrs. Lee said that it was the only photograph of Amelia that she had, and it was taken while still studying at the Royal Academy.
Elena examined every detail, every feature of her mother, trying to compare her memories of her with this image. She wondered if Amelia knew then that she would have a daughter in the future. And how did she feel, knowing about it?
The woman's gaze fell on a pendant hanging on her mother's chest. Apparently, this was the very pendant that Amelia gave to Jun, and then he returned it to Elena.
'I need to take it home and show it to Sean so that he also knows about his grandmother,' Elena thought. She did not take the pendant to this house, and all this time it was safely stored in a small box in one of the drawers in her old bedroom in Chen Lee's house.
Each time she took the pendant in her hands, Elena was captured by incomprehensible feelings, sometimes, she even thought that the world around her was freezing and the woman could even feel the air with her own hands.
This thing was not a simple decoration, Elena was sure of it, but she also did not know what exactly the pendant of Amelia was. At least for now.
The bedroom door creaked slightly, and the man went inside.
"Hey."
"Hey," Elena smiled when she saw David. "I thought you would come later."
"I missed you," he replied, sat down on the bed next to his wife and pressed her to him. "How are you?"
"Hmm, fine, I think," Elena smiled and plunged into such familiar and dear warmth. The mere presence of David beside her instantly reassured the woman.
"Do you have time?" she asked, one thought suddenly occurred to her.
"My love, are you sure it makes sense to ask such a question?" the man grinned. When it came to his beloved wife, David's priorities were unequivocal.
"Then, will you keep me company and go to one place with me?" Elena's smile was making the man's heart pound even faster over and over again.
"With great pleasure," he replied, he was more than willing to fulfill the wishes of his queen.
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