Lin Ran said that Brother didn"t even know Ji Yun, so there was no need for him to return from overseas specifically for this.
Moreover… by the time he rushed back, the burial time would be over! They couldn"t very well delay Ji Yun"s burial time just to wait for him to come back.
Since Lin Ran and Lin Nuan both said there wasn"t a need for Lin Chen to come back, Lin Jingquan and Liang Mulan didn"t insist.
Before the tombstones, Lin Ran hesitated for a long time before finally saying to Lin Nuan in a choked voice…
"This is a letter Mom left behind…" Lin Ran took out a letter from her coat pocket and handed it to Lin Nuan. "On the day Mom wasn"t around, when you called me to go over, I saw this on the table when I entered Mom"s room. Originally… I wanted to hog this to myself!"
Lin Nuan was a little surprised to hear this. She glanced sideways at Lin Ran.
"But I feel that some things inside should be very important to you! If you don"t mind… can you give me the letter after reading it? Please…"
Lin Ran said in a pleading tone.
Lin Ran very rarely showed weakness before others. She was especially unwilling to display her weakness in front of Lin Nuan. Even after helping Lin Nuan, she would pretend like she didn"t care and act like she didn"t do it to help Lin Nuan.
If she didn"t really want it very badly, Lin Ran wouldn"t have asked this of Lin Nuan.
Lin Nuan had her hesitations.
Under the umbrella, Lin Nuan unfolded the neatly folded piece of paper. But before she could read it, they heard Liang Mulan shouting for them…
Lin Nuan subconsciously gripped the letter in her hands. It was what Ji Yun left behind in her final moments!
Lin Ran could see that Lin Nuan was using so much force in holding the letter that her fingers were about to tear through the paper. She could sense the extreme internal struggle Lin Nuan was grappling with.
"I have too much remorse towards Mom, too many apologies towards her. From when I was born until the moment Mom left, I never saw her in a sober state. This letter is evidence of Mom having been sober. So… can you give it to me? I beg of you…"
Liang Mulan shouted for them once again. Lin Nuan seemed to have made up her mind, speedily taking a photo of the letter before handing it to Lin Ran.
Lin Ran was very surprised, having thought that Lin Nuan would fight her for it. Looking at Lin Nuan"s eyes that were growing increasingly red, Lin Ran"s heart was full of grat.i.tude!
After a long while, with reddened eyes as well, she solemnly received the letter from Lin Nuan"s hands. "Thank you!"
After slipping the letter into the inner pocket of her black coat, Lin Ran"s hand remained there for a long time and didn"t s.h.i.+ft away. She said, "Lin Nuan… from now on, I"ll be your older sister!"
Lin Nuan didn"t utter a sound. She was in a trance as she stared at the tombstone that didn"t even have a photo on it.
"From today on, I"ll take care of you. Whatever I owe to Mom and Mom owes to you! I"ll repay you on behalf of Mom!" Lin Ran couldn"t stop her tears from falling after she said that.
Lin Nuan s.h.i.+fted the umbrella to another hand and quietly held Lin Ran"s hand, still not saying a word.
After they got into two different cars at the entrance of the cemeterial garden, Liang Mulan instructed Fu Huai"an to drive the car to the Lin house. At a time like this, if the family could stay together, Lin Nuan and Lin Ran would both feel better.
Fu Huai"an nodded and told Liang Mulan not to worry.
After Lin Nuan got into the car, she took out her phone and enlarged the letter that Ji Yun left behind, reading it.
The letter was written on the day Ji Yun pa.s.sed away. After Lin Nuan supported her into her room to rest, once Lin Nuan was gone, she forced herself to crawl out of bed and write the letter.
Ji Yun wrote about what she went through in the letter, saying that her mental illness wasn"t hereditary.
She said, although her memory was already blurry, she remembered that at about the time she was seventeen, she and her father went to help discharge her mother, who had just given a cesarean birth to a baby boy. On the way back, they met with a car accident, and the car fell off a bridge and into the water. Later, when she regained consciousness, she found that she had been rescued by Lin Nuan"s biological father"s family.
At that time, she suffered an injury to the head and had a vague memory of things that happened in the past. It was like there was a veil over her memory… She couldn"t remember anything clearly with the veil on, only recalling that her name was Ji Yun and that she had a younger brother. Because she subsequently developed mental problems, her memory of the past became even blurrier.
Lin Nuan"s birth father didn"t disdain Ji Yun even when she subsequently developed mental problems, even deciding to marry her.
Later, Lin Nuan"s father took Ji Yun to the US and became a financial a.n.a.lyst and was doing very well. They then had their first child, a boy called Lu Boye, and bought a house in an affluent area in the US. Lin Nuan"s father worked to bring home money, while Ji Yun stayed at home to take care of the child. Their family lived in bliss!
When Lu Boye was two, Ji Yun, who was obsessed with searching for her own family, received news from a private detective agency that they suspected they had found Ji Yun"s kin. Ji Yun called Lin Nuan"s birth father before frantically returning back to the country, leaving Lu Boye in the care of a nanny!
In the end, when Ji Yun returned to Haicheng, she discovered that the people they found weren"t actually her kin. The disappointed Ji Yun was prepared to return to America, but before she reached the airport, the nanny called. She said when she took Lu Boye to play in the park, like usual, when she turned around to help Lu Boye take his water bottle from the baby stroller, she found that Lu Boye had disappeared! No matter how she searched, she couldn"t find him!
Ji Yun panicked instantly and speedily returned to the US. However, the police couldn"t find any clues, no matter how they searched. Lin Nuan"s birth father and Ji Yun then used their own savings to hire a private detective.
After going through their savings, they sold the house and the car, but it was like Lu Boye had vanished into thin air. Ji Yun"s mental condition broke down subsequently, and she frequently acted up.
At the end of his wits, Lin Nuan"s birth father embezzled his client"s money to search for his son"s whereabouts and was fired when it was discovered.
At that time, they were one step away from getting a US green card, but in the end, they were sent back to their home country. From the day they were sent back to the country, Ji Yun went crazy. She had never been fully well or sober since.
Ji Yun couldn"t remember the muddled state she was in after she became sober. She only remembered Lin Ran, and later, Lin Nuan.
She said she loved Lin Ran and Lin Nuan, but with her mental status, she really couldn"t be a good mother! She hoped that Lin Ran and Lin Nuan wouldn"t hate her!
Especially Lin Ran, toward whom she was very apologetic. She had disrupted what ought to have been a blissful life for Lin Ran, making her live in poverty with them!
After reading the letter, Lin Nuan could imagine that after a black mark like that was left on a financial a.n.a.lyst"s profile, no company would want to hire him. Hence, he could only rely on physical labor to support himself, his mentally ill wife, and their kids!
Lin Nuan thought that her birth father probably wanted to look for that older brother of hers that had gone missing!
But with his economic status, he could barely survive, so how could he find the money to look for his kid in the US!
He must have been in despair!
As for why he switched her and Lin Ran later, perhaps… it was out of selfishness. Perhaps, he didn"t want his birth daughter to suffer poverty with him!
From embezzling his client"s money to later switching his daughter with someone else"s, those two incidents had weighed upon his heart like two huge mountains!