Garden of May - Chapter 123
A pale tension settled over her lips.
Meeting the old man’s piercing gaze made it difficult to speak right away. Vanessa realized that this was exactly what he had intended—to catch the moment she let her guard down, the instant she revealed a weakness in her innocence, and strike to see how she would react.
The thoughts and explanations she had carefully organized became tangled inside the anxious silence. She needed time to steady herself, to regain the thread she had lost.
“Before I explain… may I order a glass of soda water?”
“Of course.”
At a lift of his hand, a steward promptly arrived with a glass of soda water garnished with lemon. Vanessa offered the steward a small smile in thanks, and she immediately felt nearby eyes drift toward their table before quietly scattering again.
It seemed the curiosity surrounding the meeting between two people with no apparent connection was quite intense. How many of those eyes belonged to her uncle’s people, she wondered…
But it was too late to worry about that now. Besides, the tables were spaced far enough apart that no one could overhear them.
“I’d like you to look at this first.”
Vanessa carefully placed the locket—wrapped protectively in a handkerchief—onto the table.
“And what is this?”
“I think… it was something my father carried with him back then. At the moment of the accident.”
“…”
“I only found it recently. I’ve been trying to find someone who could tell me whether it truly belonged to my parents.”
Benjamin lifted the edge of the handkerchief and looked at the worn locket before letting out a quiet sigh.
“…I see.”
The rigid wariness unique to old men slowly softened from his face.
To him, Vanessa was ultimately just a young girl around the same age as his grandchildren. Closer to a child than a grown woman, really.
Children who lost their parents young often clung desperately to the belongings left behind. Her sudden appearance—bringing his grandnephew with her, no less—had startled him at first, but how could he turn away feelings like these? How could he dismiss them as childish sentimentality?
Especially when Lady Vanessa had been nothing but polite and dignified from the moment she sat down across from him.
“I was wondering if perhaps you remembered seeing it before.”
“Well… perhaps. And perhaps not.”
Benjamin examined the locket uncertainly before noticing the half-broken clasp. He glanced at Vanessa, silently asking if he might open it.
When she nodded, the old man carefully loosened the fastening with gentle fingers. Vanessa clenched her fists tightly in her lap, her eyes fixed on him.
Click.
Has the sound of metal unlocking ever echoed this loudly in her life?
“Oh.”
At the old man’s soft exclamation, Vanessa swallowed her breath and looked up at him.
“Yes. Seeing this photograph brings it all back now. Good heavens… I saw this many times.”
The deep crease between Benjamin’s brows smoothed out as warm laughter escaped him.
“The young count used to take this out whenever he had the chance. That stern, reserved man completely changed whenever he started bragging about his daughter… The moment he opened his mouth, it was always about how adorable and precious his little girl was. As a man who only had two sons, I remember being terribly jealous of him for it.”
It was an unexpected fragment of the past.
For just a fleeting moment, Vanessa felt as though she had glimpsed the shadow of her father through the old man’s words. How he must have smiled, how he would open the locket to show people, how endlessly and proudly he must have fussed over her.
Because somewhere inside her own hazy memories, traces of it still remained.
Vanessa struggled to suppress the emotions swelling in her chest before finally smiling through damp eyes.
“He did?”
So he had been a stern man.
The few memories she still possessed of her father were filled only with warmth and gentleness. The way she had laughed at his unshaven beard when he came home too busy to shave—and how he had stubbornly kept the beard for an entire year afterward.
The way he would scoop her up into his arms without caring about appearances whenever she clung to his trousers. The ridiculous promises that he would give her the entire world.
Even back then, people had teased him mercilessly, saying that any man who doted on his daughter that much was surely terrified of his wife.
“Seeing your picture like this reminds me of those days, you truly grew up beautifully.”
Vanessa’s eyes widened. Then, unable to endure it any longer, she lowered her gaze at once.
You truly grew up beautifully. In her entire life, no one had ever said those words to her before.
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 152 - Jun 16, 2026
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 151 - Jun 16, 2026
- Protected: Garden of May Chapter 150 - Jun 16, 2026
