The day of Christmas Eve was Irish's birthday. The time froze at the moment when Irish walked out from the observation room, and then the pointer of the clock slowly and normally went away.
Irish felt that she was walking above the clouds, and her feeling of pain had broken into pieces by Joseph's words. He said he didn't love her at all. Her body that had lost the pain suddenly became the missing outer form without a soul, numbly passing through the crowd step by step and then walking into the window at the end of the corridor.
Through the glass, she seemed to be able to smell the dusty smell of the wind. The dust choked her breath and stuck in the trachea, which made her suffocate for a moment. Everything outside the window turned gray, suffusing her eyes.
People said that love was like a sweet spun sugar, but now it turned out that love was a candy which was wrapped in delicate sugar paper.
She was like a child who couldn't withstand the temptation of the beautiful sugar paper and then took it cautiously. And then someone told her that it was for her, so she was not hesitant anymore, tasting it in a hurry.
The candy taste made her unforgettable, and she was even willing to sacrifice everything to own it. Nobody told her that the sugar would taste bitter in the end.
It tasted like the semen nelumbinis, which was tasty and refreshing but with a Hindu lotus plumule inside.
The bitterness dispelled the previous sweetness soon. It seemed that the more beautiful things were more dangerous.
She recalled her mother and then reminded her father, who was lying on the sick bed. When Joseph walked out of the ward, she felt the smell of death from his calm expression.
As expected, he turned to everybody and declared Henry's death.
She heard Shirley screaming, which sounded harsh, and Ruby's guilty sobbing. It sounded like a failed movement of cello and violin, stuffing her ear.
At that moment, she felt that her tears had been frozen in her lacrimal gland for a long time. She couldn't burst into tears and couldn't repress back the tears.
She was eager to cry in Joseph's arms, and he was the only one who could bring her comfort at this moment. But as he got closer to her, she remembered the words he said in the ward as well as his cold expression.
He never knew that there was only a white paper in her life. Once she tried to use Adam's portrait to enrich the paper, but in the end, she gently wiped it with an eraser. Finally, she met him, and since then, she painted a world on the paper which belonged to them.
He was the only man in her life, but it seemed that she had never existed in his life.
Therefore, she took over the eraser again.
When Joseph called Roy, she called one of her friends and said that she was going to hold a memorial ceremony for her parents and asked her friend to contact the temple abbot for her.
Before she went abroad, she levered her mom's tombstone, took out her cremains secretly, and consecrated it in the temple. Her mother believed in Buddhism and was lonely for a lifetime, so Irish didn't hope she would face the loneliness in the cemetery after death.
Irish believed her mother could find peace in the temple, and she also believed that her mom's soul still existed in this world.
Irish didn't negotiate with her uncle and aunt but decided alone because she knew, in their eyes, it was treason and heresy since she had unclenched her mother's grave monument. She didn't hope they would be sad, so she had to disguise the fact.
It was convenient for her to pay homage to her mother in the temple.
Therefore, when she returned to the US from abroad, she settled in New York, and this temple was a place she would frequently visit. It was close to the house where she lived, and the traffic was also convenient, which was different from the desolated cemetery.
Before Henry's funeral, Irish went to the temple. Though she didn't believe in Buddhism, she was in awe of the Buddha. She was so appreciative that the Buddha could bring peace to her mother and was also grateful for the mercy of Buddha to let her mom live here for so long.
She took away her mother's remains and waited for the day to hold a funeral procession for Henry.
The day finally came.
Irish had decided to hold a multi-burial for her mother and Henry even if Henry had no previous will. Her mom had waited for a long time, so when she took out Rachel's ashes, she said to her mom, "I haven't held a memorial ceremony for you in these years because I know you have been waiting for my father. You can't be with each other when you are alive, so know you won't get peace even if I hold the memorial ceremony for you. But now you can be with him soon."
Therefore, Irish went to the Lake family and took away her father's ashes with the help of Joseph.
When she finally got his remains, she was so sorrowful. Her mother had waited for him for twenty years!
She didn't follow Joseph's words to the cemetery because she knew it was an empty tomb and it was unnecessary for her to go there; indeed, she had another plan. Of course, she didn't tell her uncle it was a ten-year plan for her, and she couldn't tell anyone.
Irish went to the airport and took the plane to Chicago. For the convenience of carrying, she mixed her parents' ashes together in a porcelain jar.
But she was sore when she finally arrived at the airport in Chicago.
Though she had traveled to many cities, she had never been there before. It was not because she didn't want to come here but because she dared not.
When she was still a small child, she knew New York was not her mom's hometown, and she had grown up in another city with her uncle. But they settled in New York later. The environment in the hometown cultivated her mom as a sweet woman, and she was as beautiful as a pearl.
Irish once thought Chicago was her hometown; however, her mom told her that she had never been to Chicago once.
Irish was confused why she was obsessed with this city since she had never been there for once.
But she got the reason later.
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