Please Forget Me - Chapter 330

‧₊˚ ☁️⋅♡𓂃 ࣪ ִֶָ☾.

I held my breath, waiting for the words to come from his mouth.

“I never asked.”

“…”

“…I never even asked…. I was so inattentive. I’m sorry.”

I’m not sure how he interpreted the sigh that slipped out of me, but the doctor looked embarrassed and apologized.

“So then, why did you stop wearing it?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked.”

Whether Killian’s words were true or not, I learned one thing for certain.

‘My father and I were never close.’

Now that I knew there was nothing to expect from him, I let the conversation drop and pretended to pick at the meal I didn’t want. The doctor still seemed intent on talking to me and then said something utterly baffling.

“Dana, if you have worries, don’t hesitate to tell me. I know you’re more comfortable with your grandmother than with me, but still…”

I was so taken aback that I asked without thinking.

“Do you know what kind of person my grandmother is?”

He stared at me wide-eyed, then asked instead,

“What do you mean by that…?”

But before he could continue, his secretary interrupted.

“Director, I’m sorry to intrude while you’re talking, but it’s time for your next appointment.”

The conversation ended there.

“Dana, I’m sorry I can’t see you home. Tonight, no, I have an engagement this evening as well. I’m sorry. It’s been scheduled for three months, so I can’t change it. I’ll see you tonight.”

He put me into a Loveridge family car, then hurried into another vehicle without even checking that I’d left safely. I watched his rushed retreating figure and turned over the answer I’d found in my mind.

‘He really doesn’t know anything about my relationship with Grandmother.’

It didn’t feel like he knew and was pretending not to. It seemed that my past self had never told him about my grandmother’s abuse.

‘Dana… why?’

You told a complete stranger, yet never told your own father. Was he not just distant, but even more distant than a stranger?

[What if I told him, and he took Grandmother’s side too?]

It seemed the Dana of the past never managed to find the answer to that question.

* * *

“Dana, I told you to behave like a Marchioness!”

All day long, the woman called my grandmother nitpicked my every move until she was practically beside herself with anger. As I had all day, I looked at her in confusion and asked myself,

‘Why do I have to behave like a Marchioness?’

I still hadn’t accepted the reality that I was one. And that wasn’t the only reality I couldn’t accept.

At first, I thought all of this was a performance staged by that man, meant to frighten me, to toy with me.

I can’t take it anymore. I’m coming back to you, Killian!

If I cried out like that, he’d appear from somewhere with a flourish—

“Dana, see? This is what happens when you leave me. So don’t ever think about leaving again.”

He’d gather me into his arms and scold me gently. And to make that possible, he’d orchestrated this entire farce so he could keep lying to me as much as he liked. That’s what I believed.

No, what’s more accurate is that I wanted to believe it.

‘He wanted me enough to lie about being my husband, there’s no way he’d abandon me so easily.’

I resolved not to be fooled by his deception again. That was why I refused to surrender, even to my grandmother’s tirades disguised as ‘lessons in noble etiquette’.

To be honest, she wasn’t frightening enough to make me want to give in. In my memories, she’d been huge and terrifying. But seeing her now, she was smaller and frail, and I couldn’t understand why I’d ever been afraid of her.

Whether because I was grown now or because of my status as Marchioness, she no longer tried to strike me. She only yelled incessantly, which was irritating at most.

“If you dare make a single mistake in front of the Marquis today—! Dana! How dare you ignore an elder when she’s speaking!”

When the shrieking old woman reached out toward me, I thought she’d finally lost her temper and was about to hit me. Instead, she tried to snatch away the photograph I was holding.

Smack.

I knocked her hand aside just in time, before those filthy fingers could touch my mother’s photograph, and glared at her.

“H–how dare you….”

“Madam Loveridge, shall I really start behaving like a Marchioness?”

Perhaps she sensed what I was about to do. Without a word, she withdrew her hand and finally shut her nagging mouth. I could clearly see her clenched jaw trembling.

‘Ha. Serves you right. Did you think I’d stay a child forever?’

The little Dana inside me laughed.