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When I was in kindergarten, Grandma Eleanor suggested Dad move us to another villa.
Grandma Eleanor said the houses there had the best educational resources in the city.
Dad didn’t want to move. He said I didn’t need to stress about studying; just growing up
healthy and happy was enough.
Grandma Eleanor sighed. “Alright, health and happiness are more important than
anything.”
Even though Dad was very good to me and spent time with me every day, I still didn’t like
him.
Every day after Nanny Maria finished work and left, it was just the two of us at home.
I played by myself in my room, and he watched the surveillance videos of Mom when she was alive in his study.
He tried every method but could only recover videos from the three months before Mom’s
death.
Except for the last few days when they argued, most of those three months were peaceful.
In the morning, Mom would make breakfast and wake Dad and me up. After breakfast,
Mom would tidy up the house, and Dad would take me to preschool.
When Dad and I weren’t home, Mom would start drawing.
She liked to draw comics and upload them to a website, attracting many fans.
What ”
I had seen that comic on Leo’s computer. It was about a gravely ill girl who met her true love.
The girl was tricked by a classmate into a bar and almost bullied by someone, when a boy nearby stepped in and saved her.
The girl fell in love with the boy at first sight. The boy didn’t reject her love, and they experienced many ups and downs together.
In the end of the story, the girl recovered from her illness, the boy truly fell in love with her, and they had a daughter, living a peaceful and happy life as a family of three.
Leo said, “So boring. Not as good as my Ultraman.”
But I cried when I watched it. I knew it was Mom drawing herself.
Her imagined self.
Mom once told me she wasn’t from this world.
She was gravely ill in her world and was sent here.
I once told this to my favorite teacher.
But the teacher told Grandma Eleanor, and Grandma Eleanor brought a psychologist.
The psychologist said it was my subconscious creating a beautiful lie to help me accept Mom’s passing.
Only Dad remained silent.
He later sent the hard drive to a professional repair service, but they couldn’t fix it. The sound from Mom’s last moments still couldn’t be recovered.
That year, he invested most of his fortune in a foreign tech company.
He was very lucky. By the time I was in middle school, that tech company had grown into
a unicorn in its industry, and Dad became a major shareholder.
He was thirty–four that year, still very young.
He and Mom met when they were twenty.
At that time, Grandpa had passed away, and Grandma Eleanor was in the ICU after a car accident, her life hanging in the balance. He dropped out of college to take over the
company.
In his most painful time, he met Mom, and I came into being.
