Both Jim and Sean were stunned by Samuel’s words.
Sean gazed at Jim, then at Samuel.
“E-Father Samuel, there must be a mistake! How could I and Mr. Landry be…”
“That’s right.” Jim frowned.
“My mother died twenty years ago, and I can’t possibly have a brother. Did my mother rise from the
dead?”
“She didn’t rise from the dead. She didn’t die.”
Samuel sighed, took out a disk from the box, and gave it to Malcolm.
“Play the video.”
Malcolm frowned and hesitated before accepting the disk. He found a laptop in the room and turned it
on, wanting to play the disk straight from the laptop.
Frowning, Lucas passed a small projector to Malcolm, which Malcolm accepted and connected to the
laptop Seconds later, a video started playing on the white wall in front of them, revealing a woman with
a pale face, smiling at the camera.
“Hello everyone, I’m Lucy Hamilton.”
Jim, still seated, felt his whole body freeze as he stared in disbelief at the woman in the video. He felt
like all the joints in his body had gone stiff.
‘How could that be?’
The woman in the video looked just like his mother, Lucy, but the face he was staring at looked older
than the one in the photo he had seen; she seemed at least 20 years older.
Despite that, he could recognize with the first look that this was his mother. The way her eyes looked,
and her voice…were the same as the photos he had seen! Jim could feel his blood rushing from his
feet to his brain. He looked at the video again and felt like his soul was taken from him.
‘H-How?’
On the contrary, Sean was much calmer than Jim. The only thing he was curious about was when his
mother filmed this video.
“I know that everyone is probably wondering a lot of things. Since many of you have thought that I have
died a long time ago, I’d like to first thank Samuel-no, I need to call you Father Samuel now.
“Thank you for saving me, Father Samuel.
“Secondly, I wanted to apologize to my family, and Charles, whom I used to love, and…” The woman
sighed, and her gaze wavered with melancholy.
“And my son, Jim.
“I’m sorry. All these years, my husband., Richard had suggested many times that he wanted to leave
Merchant City with me. It wasn’t safe for me to stay here after all.
“He was afraid that people from the Landry family would find me, afraid that the Quinn family would
seek revenge on me, but I insisted on staying here in Merchant City just so I could secretly see Jim
more often.”
Having said that, she took out a stash of photos. They were all photos of Jim from when he was about
five until he was a grown man. Each photo was taken from a candid angle.
“These were taken by Richard for me.”
The woman’s lips curled upward. “I’m not a heartless mother, Jim. I wanted so much to hug you, to tell
you that I’m still alive, but I was too weak.”
62fb1bb41dcb31934bd49bda