Mirabella's gaze didn't wander; it remained fixed on the gravestone.
About two or three minutes after her words fell, Aiden emerged from behind a nearby tombstone.
He walked towards Mirabella at a leisurely pace.
"Are you... okay?" Aiden asked, looking at Mirabella's gaunt cheeks with hesitation.
Given that the Gilbert family had gone bankrupt and her parents had divorced, he was supposed to hate her.
Mirabella lifted her head to glance at Aiden. "Were you waiting here for me?"
She had sensed a sneaky presence on her way over, but she hadn't expected it to be Aiden.
Aiden opened his mouth to deny it but swallowed his words at the last moment. He cautiously glanced at James standing with a significant presence nearby and whispered, "I have something to tell you."
"I'll wait outside for you," James said to Mirabella in a soft tone.
After acknowledging him, Mirabella turned around once James had walked away. "Go ahead."
Aiden fidgeted with his hands for a while before finally speaking, "My grandma wanted me to pass on a message to you..."
Mirabella's eyelashes fluttered slightly, and her already pale cheeks turned even whiter as the cold wind blew her hair into disarray and Aiden's words continued to reach her.
"...She said not to be sad and to stop dwelling on the past. You were always her most beloved granddaughter." When Aiden got to this part, he remembered how his grandma had still been lucid, telling him this with perhaps something more in her eyes.
He didn't fully understand why she insisted on emphasizing that last part.
After some thought, he figured the elderly lady probably wanted to express, before leaving, that she never considered Mirabella an outsider.
Coming back to her senses, Mirabella felt the turmoil in her heart caused by the words 'from the beginning to the end' gradually calm down. She looked at Aiden. "Thank you."
"He said Shawn and Marian caught the nine o'clock flight. They should be landing at the airport in about an hour." James then took off his coat and draped it over her shoulders. "They're coming to pay their respects to Catherine."
Mirabella hummed lightly and then said, "I'll go pick them up."
Seeing her looking worse than she had in the past few days, James paused for a moment before saying, "Why don't I go? You haven't rested much these past few days. I'll pick them up."
Mirabella smiled and shook her head, insisting, "It's okay."
Unable to persuade her, James didn't try further.
Mirabella wrapped the coat around herself, glanced back at the cemetery, and then said to Wyatt standing by, "Could you take that kid back home for me?"
She was referring to Aiden, who was following behind.
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