Carter was about to speak with Jeremy when he heard the sudden scream from the maid upstairs.
Just as he turned around, he also heard a loud crash coming from the stairs as if something heavy was rolling down the stairs.
When he lifted his eyes to look closer, he saw that it was Shirley who was falling down the stairs with her wheelchair, and he was stunned.
“Shirley! ” Panicking, Carter rushed over to Shirley who had tumbled down the stairs.
Camille hurried over as well.
Madeline and Jeremy were surprised too. Despite all of the despicable acts Shirley had committed, they did not look coldly from the sidelines.
The maid on the first floor stood as still as a statue as she watched Shirley fell the whole way down the stairs.
Carter had repeatedly told her to properly watch over Shirley, but now that Shirley had fallen down the stairs along with her wheelchair, the maid was
worried that she, too, would soon suffer.
Shirley fell the entire way down to the ground floor. When she lost her balance, the wheelchair ran over her. She felt pain but she did not care anymore.
Carter ran to the bottom of the stairs and squatted down to carry Shirley.
The fall and stumble from the first floor had given Shirley some flesh wounds, but her head suffered the most grievous injury as it had crashed against the metal railing of the stairs.
Carter picked Shirley up, getting ready to run to the hospital.
When Shirley, whose eyes were half-closed from the pain, saw Carter’s panicked countenance, crystal
-clear tears rolled down from the corners of her eyes.
“You don’t have to send me to the hospital,” Shirley said with a smile.
Carter stopped abruptly in his tracks. He felt a hot, sticky liquid on the palm of his hand.
As he wondered what it was, Camille suddenly screamed, “Her lower body’s bleeding! Send her to the hospital! Hurry!”
“Yes, I am. I don’t want to see you again. I’m tired.”
The corners of Shirley’s lips tugged as an endless pain and despair could be seen in her smile.
“I truly felt thankful for meeting you back then. All those years we’ve spent together make me feel that I’m the luckiest person in the world.
“In those earlier times, I had always been immersed in my selfish hatred. I hated my parents for only loving my brother, but after finding my father’s notebook, I realized that their love had never been biased. They had even cared for me a little more than they had for my brother.
“They sent me to St. Piaf to further my studies, yet I thought that they wanted to abandon me. Believing myself infallible, I left school and wandered the streets. I was indifferent when I learned about their deaths, but I finally know how stupid I was. Hiss…”
As Shirley recounted her past, she frowned in pain, and more tears filled the corners of her eyes.
“Even though my stupid brother always seems to make life difficult for me and occasionally scolds me, I know he cares about me. Yet, his so-called sister’s stubbornness killed him and that kind girl in the end …”
As Shirley spoke, she turned her face toward Madeline and Jeremy who stood nearby.
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