Holly was completely bewildered.
It took her quite a while to understand his words.
Before this, she had imagined countless scenarios in which they might et again.
School, shopping mall, but she never thought it would be him, the refined young man in a wheelchair she t ten years ago at Orbital Park.
Her gaze involuntarily lowered, hesitant to speak, "And your leg?"
Blake Sinclair noticed her gaze and touched his leg, "At that ti, the situation was special, so I used a wheelchair for a while."
He spoke seriously, his explanation was concise and straightforward, without any further concealnt.
Yet, even so, Holly still found it absurd.
"How can you prove it?"
Blake Sinclair seed to have anticipated this, "Wait for a mont."
He went upstairs and when he returned, his fist was tightly clenched.
Blake Sinclair walked to her, bent slightly, "Do you rember this?"
As he spoke, he loosened his fingers, letting a keychain dangle lightly between them.
It was a small lotus flower carved from jade, its petals unfurled, with a crescent moon embedded in the center of the lotus heart.
The two elents blended seamlessly together, without any sense of discord.
This was the keychain she gave to the boy in the wheelchair ten years ago, to celebrate his birthday.
Holly rembered this keychain so well because of its unique design.
The cool moon and the pure lotus combined, very much like the lonely boy that night.
At the ti, she hesitated for a long ti before giving it away.
Holly took the keychain, her fingertips lightly tracing over the jade lotus flower.
The texture was smooth and warm, its surface without a scratch, showing how much care its owner had taken over the years.
She instinctively gripped the keychain tighter, its hard edges pressed into her palm, the slight sting reminding her this was not a dream.
At this point, she couldn’t help but believe.
Ten years ago, Orbital Park, fireworks, his birthday.
A suspicion gradually ford in her heart.
She asked, "Didn’t Laurel once say you’ve set off fireworks for yourself on your birthday every year since you turned eighteen, is that why?"
Blake Sinclair didn’t answer directly but instead slowly crouched in front of her, slightly tilting his head up to look at her, with silent devotion.
"I’m very fortunate, on my eighteenth birthday and this year, my thirtieth, I’ve witnessed the two most beautiful fireworks displays of my life, both because of the sa girl."
When he said this, his eyes were bright, like sparks dancing within them.
In a daze, Holly seed to see that night ten years ago again, the splendid fireworks now vividly blooming from his eyes.
Blake Sinclair watched her without blinking, his gaze intense and focused.
Holly felt her ears getting hot under his gaze, reaching out to pull him up.
Blake Sinclair followed her lead, sitting down next to her on a chair.
Holly’s mind was still sowhat in disarray, the information in his previous sentence was too overwhelming.
She tried hard to sort out her thoughts, "Then, what does this have to do with the content in the safe? And why do you have a photo of from my first year of college on your phone?"
Blake Sinclair had anticipated this question, placing a picture in her open palm.
It was the instant photo he took when they returned to Port Kallow, which he took from her album in exchange for his reward.
Holly frowned slightly, "What do you an?"
Blake Sinclair gently touched the photo with his fingertip, "Haven’t you already guessed?"
Holly thought of the dream she kept having, the one about her childhood.
In that dream, there was always a blurry-faced little boy in a wheelchair, and every ti she tried to see his face, the dream would end.
Her heart began to race uncontrollably, bringing warmth to her chest and breath.
"In my dream, there’s often a little boy in a wheelchair,"
She spoke with a trembling voice but was more determined, "Is that you?"
Blake Sinclair was watching her all along, yet he didn’t answer imdiately.
He took her tense, clenched hand and patiently unfolded each finger, then interlocked his fingers with hers.
"Co with ."
They walked from the first floor to the second.
Every step up the stairs felt like a journey through a ti tunnel.
The layout of the rooms on the second floor was all so familiar, the window at the end of the hallway, the revolving bookshelf in the corner, even the chipped edge at the bottom of the ladder, all exactly like the scenes in her mind.
And when they reached the room with the two windows, Holly suddenly stopped in her tracks.
Her gaze fell directly inside the room.
That glance seed to traverse across endless mountains and rivers.
It was already evening, and the sky was tinged with a faint blue hue.
The sheer curtains were half-open, swayed gently by the evening breeze.
Below the window was a brown wooden table, identical to the one where she lay asleep on the polaroid.
In the upper left corner of the table sat a small desktop bookshelf with a photo fra on the top shelf.
Holly Crowe stepped closer, seeing clearly the photo inside, a little girl sleeping soundly on the table.
It was her.
She looked at that photo and compared it with the one in her hand; they were exactly the sa.
How could there be two identical polaroids?
Holly Crowe was filled with questions.
But Blake Sinclair soon led her downstairs to the backyard.
The backyard’s wall was built high, and outside it, a tall tree stretched its branches, casting a shade over a corner of the backyard.
"What’s this?" Holly Crowe recognized the tree.
"The Myrica Tree."
Blake Sinclair answered for her, his voice carrying a sense of nostalgia.
Returning to the living room, the answer was already erging.
Blake Sinclair handed his phone to her, the screen displaying an investigation docunt, with the investigatée’s na being Shannon Yarrow.
He tapped slightly on the birth date column in the docunt.
Upon seeing the line, Holly Crowe’s eyes widened.
October 18th?
But Shannon Yarrow clearly stated her birthday was June 16th, and the search software confird this date.
"Five years ago, Shannon Yarrow went through various channels and changed her public birthday to June 16th."
Blake Sinclair’s voice calmly resolved her doubts, "Holly, everything in the safe and the password has nothing to do with Shannon Yarrow. June 16th was the day we first t."
His gaze seed to travel through ti, past the living room window, landing on that tall Myrica Tree in the yard, slipping into a distant mory.
"That sumr when I was seven, on the fifth day in Port Kallow, it was very hot. A little girl with pigtails fell from the tree while trying to pick myrica..."
He turned, his gaze returning to her, a gentle smile on his face, "She landed right into my arms. That little girl was lively and mischievous. From then on, she’d co almost every day with a basket of myrica, under the guise of apologizing to ."
"She would lie on the table next to , looking at books she couldn’t understand, drawing quirky little swallows on the blank pages of my workbook. She said the character ’Sinclairs’ was too hard to write, so a swallow would represent just fine."
"Later, I was taken back to the Sinclair Family, and we gradually lost contact. Until ten years later, at Orbital Park, we t again."
Blake Sinclair sighed softly, holding her hand tighter.
He looked at her, his eyes clear and sincere, as if wanting to offer his entire heart to her, "The swallows in the sketchbook were drawn by you; the ceramic swallow was a farewell gift from you; everything in the safe relates to you. This is what you want to know about my past."
My past was filled with your na from the very start.
It proved that a human’s brain capacity is limited.
Holly Crowe just watched his mouth move, each word entering her ears, but her mind was completely blank.
It seed like there was a machine in her brain, which, due to overload, stopped functioning.
Blake Sinclair noticed her confused and unfocused gaze, realizing she needed ti to process, so he got up to pour a glass of water.
When the cold ceramic cup touched her palm, Holly Crowe snapped back to reality.
She watched the ripples in the cup and her brain, stirred by the ripples, slowly restarted.
Blake Sinclair’s words began to erge one by one, recombining into sentences.
They had known each other twenty years ago.
Her lips were indeed a bit dry, so she picked up the cup to moisten them.
As clarity returned, another question surfaced in her mind, and she looked up, "Why don’t I have any mory of these things?"
The mory of when she was five was blank in Holly Crowe’s mind.
At ho, Director Lennon and Teacher Crowe rarely ntioned childhood events, and even the family photo album lacked anything from that year.
Even the dream she had before felt veiled as if there was a layer of gauze, hazy and unreal.
She once thought they were all false, entirely imagined childhood fragnts.
Until today, Blake Sinclair proved those past events really did happen.
But why couldn’t she rember any of it?
The more she tried to rember, the more her brain felt a stinging pain, as if so self-protection chanism was preventing her from recalling the past.
Every ti she tried to touch those mories, she would have this reaction.
Blake Sinclair noticed sothing was wrong and took the cup from her hand, held her close against his shoulder.
"Perhaps, it’s been too long," he comforted, yet also carried tension.
If Holly Crowe looked up now, she might catch a fleeting flash of relief in Blake Sinclair’s eyes.
But at this mont, she was overwheld by the blank spaces in her mory, unable to delve deeper into the secrets he held beneath his gaze.
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