Guidelines for the Perfect Goodbye - Chapter 133
“Ha.”
A short laugh escaped.
“Haha…”
The laughter gradually lengthened.
Cecilia pulled back her hair.
She looked around at the suddenly cold surroundings. Gill, Dane, Diana. Their gazes were strange, as if they were watching a woman swaying to and fro with nothing but flowers in her head.
But Cecilia couldn’t fully collect her thoughts.
Everything was falling into place.
There was this premise…
Perhaps everything happened against Louise’s desire after all.
What if it stemmed from the ambition of a fallen noble thirsting for social ascent from a long time ago…?
If she had her sights set on the Lasphilla Countdom and used gypsies to approach the this noble house…
‘No, that’s not it.’
Reality was more cruel and painful than that.
Why had Evelyn left traces on her wedding dress of all things? She wouldn’t have looked at that dress again after the wedding.
Even so, if she had left the wedding dress for Cecilia’s mother, it was a clue.
‘The wedding dress.’
A symbol of marriage.
The marriage of the Lasphilla Countdom.
Evelyn Lasphilla in a pure white wedding dress…
‘And Adam Lasphilla’s marriage.’
The last words Evelyn left for Lilith.
‘So she was discarded.’
Who would discard a mistress or… a wife?
‘Father.’
Cecilia closed her eyes deeply and traveled back to a certain time.
A woman with tightly curled hair, little wayward locks escaping and billowing in the wind, stepped down from a carriage.
She gaped at the ceiling of the main hall, unable to suppress her admiration.
‘Wow…’
The pure and honest reaction of a country girl ended there, in that brief moment when no one saw her.
Soon, she met Cecilia’s eyes at the landing.
Her eyes, which were quite pretty, widened. Then she smiled softly. That smile was as harmful as her quaintly curled hair was harmless.
Goosebumps pricked her arms, and Cecilia turned away and quickly walked to her mother’s room.
Instinctively, she entered Garnet Room and trembled in her mother’s arms.
‘Why didn’t I heed that feeling then?’
She chastised herself out of habit.
Why didn’t you know?
You should have known the moment you returned.
You should have been the first to pay attention.
…to that woman.
‘Bernarda Dahlia.’
The daughter of Baron Thalia.
That woman joined hands with the gypsy. Then she conspired with her father—who needed Evelyn’s inheritance—killed Evelyn Lasphilla, and became the Countess.
The reason the problems couldn’t be solved was because they were always approached from the time they entered the Count’s family.
Louise, Bernarda, Adam.
‘They were in cahoots from the beginning.’
Through her wedding dress, Evelyn reminded her of Louise’s existence and left the most important warning.
‘Do not trust Adam Lasphilla.’
…Lilith died of illness.
This too was likely the work of Bernarda and Louise.
‘Did Father intervene even in this moment?’
You, the man who cherished that woman so much, ended up killing her with your own hands…?
Just as she couldn’t ask Lilith how she died, this too was a question difficult to answer.
The father of that day is no longer.
So all she could do was protect and fend off.
Her resolve for revenge became firmer. Hatred grew larger.
Her heart was filled with such vast and immense emotions, yet it felt empty, as if it had a hole.
Gaaasp…
Cecilia couldn’t even breathe properly. Dane and Gill kept asking her incomprehensible questions. Questions she couldn’t decipher.
She couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t see, she couldn’t feel.
Then, a chillingly cold touch reached her.
“Diana… Hollings…”
She gave a firm nod, her gaze unwavering. Cecilia blankly looked at the hand placed over hers.
It was the rough, cracked hand of a maid.
A hand that did not match her name at all.
A hand that had endured until it became like this.
For revenge.
You felt this way too.
‘Didn’t you…?’
Diana silently nodded. As if she understood everything. Sometimes, emotions could be conveyed through the sheer pain of betrayal and the wounds that bled from it, even without knowing the details.
The pain of betrayal unseen by those who hadn’t experienced it. The sorrow of loss.
Both had fragments of that dreadful life left within them.
They looked at each other like girls who had met by chance on a ruined battlefield.
Diana no longer questioned Cecilia’s identity. She didn’t ask her purpose, nor her reasons.
She just entwined her pinky finger with Cecilia’s and, in a resolute tone, promised.
“I will help you.”
“…”
“Achieve what you want. I’ll achieve what I want too.”
Cecilia smiled faintly and said,
“Maybe what we want is the same.”
