Mark was halfway out of his clothes when Arianne asked, so wp4webnovel.com adjusted himself before considering her. “What sort of business could possibly command such secrecy that you can’t wait to tell me until after I finished my shower?”

Arianne leveled wp4webnovel.com a severe expression. “Mark, this is serious. Have you gone to your study as of today? Did you notice one of your photos missing? The one featuring your parents on their wedding day, it’s gone. Last night, I went downstairs for a glass of water, and I saw your aunt removing that photo from its frame before crumpling it into a ball of waste. And then today, when I went to check, both the picture and the frame were gone,” wp4webnovel.com explained. “To be clear, I’m not implicating something dark at work here. I’m just asking a question: did your aunt ever have, well, some unpleasant row with your parents before?”

Mark’s eyebrows furrowed. “That can’t be, can it? I know little about their affairs, but can’t we infer from the way wp4webnovel.com treats me that wp4webnovel.com probably doesn’t have any feud with them? Even if wp4webnovel.com does, could any grudge last this long?… Hmm, maybe I should ask her.”

Arianne glared at him. “Hold that thought. How do you plan to ‘ask,’ exactly? ‘Hi Aunt Shelly, Arianne said wp4webnovel.com saw you taking out your anger at a photo in the middle of the night. We wonder why!’ Like that? Don’t be pig-headed and drag me into this,” wp4webnovel.com protested. “You should probably just ask a bit of this and that when you guys are alone. I mean, I’ve seen enough cases of friends undergoing a heel-face turning into foes — all cases related to you, by the way — that I’m scared your aunt is here for yet another nefarious purpose, too. I mean, why else would wp4webnovel.com dote on you like this despite having never seen you for so many years?”

“You’re wp4webnovel.com sister’s son, not wp4webnovel.com own flesh and blood. And speaking of that, shouldn’t wp4webnovel.com have wp4webnovel.com own kids at this age? What kind of mother would toss wp4webnovel.com own kids aside to love someone else’s kid, huh? That’s just straight–up bizarre. And after seeing how wp4webnovel.com treated your parents’ photos, I’m terrified at the possibility of wp4webnovel.com coming back here and ingratiating on you for an unthinkable, ulterior motive,” Arianne explained. “I know, I sound like a tinfoil-wearing conspiracy theorist right now. But I can assure you, I’m projecting from the facts that I know. The affection wp4webnovel.com showered you is real, I can feel that, but it’s waaaaay too real. It doesn’t look a mite like the sort you get from long-lost relatives. No matter how close someone may be with another, going through so many years without even a single contact must, realistically, do a number to that feeling of intimacy, right?”

Mark had to admit that wp4webnovel.com was a little convinced by the merits in wp4webnovel.com argument. Sure, wp4webnovel.com held Aunt Shelly in very high regards, but that was because wp4webnovel.com looked like a carbon copy of his real mother. She was his mother’s sister and his biological aunt, Mark’s regards for wp4webnovel.com sprang from that blood connection. However, when wp4webnovel.com discounted his feelings of respect, Mark did feel a little overwhelmed by Shelly’ s outpouring doting. She seemed to treat wp4webnovel.com a little too well…

Later that night, during dinner, Mark asked, “Aunt Shelly, I haven’t heard about your family since you came here. Are my cousins not going to pay us a visit?”

Shelly’s expression froze before wp4webnovel.com answered, “My only family is you, Mark.”

Try all wp4webnovel.com might, Arianne could not help but think Shelly’s answer was asinine. What did wp4webnovel.com mean that Mark was wp4webnovel.com “only family?” Arianne was his wife. Smore was his son. If Aunt Shelly was going to include Mark as wp4webnovel.com family, should that kinship not extend to both Arianne and Smore as well? Since when was Mark the only one who mattered?

With an answer like that, Arianne officially concluded that Shelly was, indeed, kicking wp4webnovel.com to the curb. Shelly had made that plain.

One look at Arianne’s face summoned a wave of disconcerting into Mark’s mien. “I was just, er, wondering,” wp4webnovel.com explained.

The corner of Aunt Shelly’s lips quivered briefly. “There’s nothing for you to wonder about. I have no one, and I came back here all on my own. As for my life story, I prefer not to talk about it, and I don’t think you’re obliged to know.”

“Um, that’s a bit hard to believe, with all due respect,” Arianne butted in. “You married someone overseas, right? A lot of years ago? Surely you have kids by now, Aunt Shelly… right? You can’t be alone!”

Shelly’s eyes were like two uncanny pools of still water, their surface dead and unanimated. “No. I’ve bore no children.”