Chapter 734: Returning to Her Maiden Home

When Rosalind Green saw Ethan Hawthorne and Bernice living together like a married couple, she broke down and ran away in tears. Adrian Hawthorne wasn’t worried about his mother getting lost, though; she had grown up in Tristone and knew the area like the back of her hand.

Adrian Hawthorne found Rosalind Green in a nearby park. She was sitting on a bench by the lake with faint tear stains still visible on her face, but she seemed very calm. Seeing Adrian, she even managed a smile and said, "I’m fine now. Let’s go."

Rosalind Green got up, acting as if nothing was wrong, but this only made Adrian more uneasy. It would have been normal for Rosalind to be sobbing her heart out; this calm demeanor was honestly quite strange.

"If you’re upset, it’s okay to cry," Adrian said glumly. He didn’t know what else to say; he wasn’t good with comforting words.

’I should have brought Tang Xiaopang with me,’ he thought. ’That chubby girl is a real sweet-talker and knows just how to cheer people up. It would be so much better if she were here.’

Rosalind smiled faintly and said calmly, "I’m not upset. It’s getting dark. Let’s go see your grandfather."

’Of course she was upset; that was a lie. Right now, her heart felt like it was being sliced by a dull knife, sawing away slowly. But Phoebe Huxley had said that a mother must be tough. No matter how bitter or difficult things got, you couldn’t let your child see. You had to grit your teeth and bear it; otherwise, you didn’t deserve to be a mother.’

Rosalind reflected on the past four years, feeling deeply ashamed. In those years, she hadn’t deserved to be a mother; she had let her son endure so much hardship. From now on, she would strive to be more like Phoebe Huxley. Even if she couldn’t help her son, she would not drag him down.

But the more she acted this way, the more Adrian suspected the shock had been too much for her, that something was mentally wrong. He couldn’t ask directly, afraid of upsetting Rosalind even more. ’I’d better take her to the hospital for a check-up tomorrow,’ he decided.

"Let’s find a place to eat first, then we’ll go see Grandfather."

Adrian Hawthorne didn’t want to eat at his grandfather’s house. He disliked his maternal relatives. His grandfather was a pedant, full of self-righteous airs. His grandmother was meek and completely lacked a mind of her own. His uncle was a timid coward, petty and always looking to gain some small advantage.

Of course, he had never really interacted with his grandfather or uncle; his impressions of them came almost entirely from Ethan Hawthorne’s descriptions. Ethan looked down on his in-laws, but his assessment of the Green family was actually quite on the mark.

Rosalind didn’t object. When they were out, she deferred to her son. Adrian had spent a lot of time in Tristone recently and was already quite familiar with the area. He took Rosalind to a small eatery, and after their meal, he found a hotel near her father’s house.

The Green family lived over on Veridia Road, in an old district of Tristone. While the Hawthornes lived in an affluent area, the Greens were just ordinary folk. Their home wasn’t large, but it at least had three rooms. The rooms themselves weren’t huge, but for Tristone, this was considered quite spacious.

Adrian bought some pastries and a piece of corduroy fabric, then went with Rosalind to the Green family home. As they walked through the narrow alleyways, they passed a long-unseen sight: a communal boiler, billowing steam, where several people were lining up with thermoses to get hot water.

The alleyways were long, a tangled web of passages that twisted and turned. A first-time visitor would surely get lost. Adrian had no memory of his mother’s family home; he had only been two years old when he left Tristone, so even if he had visited the Greens before, he couldn’t recall it.

Rosalind, however, knew the way like the back of her hand and led on ahead, her steps growing progressively lighter. This shabby, narrow alleyway held all her memories from her girlhood and early womanhood, and for the most part, they were happy ones.

Her life had been relatively smooth. While her family wasn’t wealthy, her parents had doted on her. She never had to do any chores, instead learning needlework and how to make pastries from her mother, and studying the zither, chess, calligraphy, and painting with her father. It was just that she lacked a natural aptitude and never truly mastered any of these arts, only learning a little of each.