As Foley holds the wine bottle, he feels that the Salmel in front of him is dignified and generous, very different from the girl he knew before, and it is obviously an ambiguous question, which comes out of her mouth as if he is talking about a well-known classic novel dialogue.

"Yes, I had a girl I dated but she disappeared."

Forlì had the devil say something like that, and this became the beginning of his relationship with Shamer, and it was not until after they got married that Foley realized that it was not himself who had a relationship with him at the meeting that day, but Shamel, who asked the question.

To outsiders, it seemed as if he was the winner, but he was so confused that he didn't know how to marry such a wife. Sammel's father ran a skincare business, and although the business was not as prosperous as it was more than a decade ago, he also accumulated a rich family business. Naturally, Salmel was pampered and had no shortage of followers, but she took a fancy to Foley, a poor boy who had just graduated.

When it comes to the relationship between two people, Foley really doesn't know how to describe it, as if everything is predestined, the girl he dated at that time disappeared, as he said at the party, the girl disappeared, but Foley couldn't be sure if the girl really disappeared. He neither looked for nor inquired, so to speak, he did nothing. It's just that the date that was supposed to last for a while was interrupted, and Representative Foley didn't know where the girl lived and didn't call her cellphone, he was busy with his work, and it wasn't until half a year later that he realized that the girl had really disappeared.

But we can't count as dating, Foley thinks, not dating. Except for going shopping and watching movies every week, they hardly talked about whether they were dating, and indeed the two drank a drink like a couple, snuggled up in front of the big screen in the movie theater, gave each other chocolates and roses on Valentine's Day, and once made a small wound on the wire on Foley's finger in order to make a rose for the girl.

The girl smiled like the sun rising on the beach when she got the roses, he took her back to Seattle to visit her parents, the mother liked this girl very much, she went to watch his basketball game, handed him the towel, everyone thought they were in love, of course they were a couple, but God knows why after Ephia disappeared, Foley didn't go to her, there was no nervousness and no worry, as if she would come back at any time, in the coffee shop downstairs in his company, and handed him the morning package, A cup of Americano with sugar and an omelette-fried sandwich with lots of pepper. And he would give her a doughnut after work, watch her finish it, and then go their separate jobs.

Whether or not Efia was a boyfriend, and whether they had been dating for more than a year, Foley never understood, like an unsolvable geometry problem, he gave up thinking from the beginning. The relationship between the two is like a messy luggage left in a suitcase with lost keys, and it is gradually no longer remembered. Only occasionally in a gust of wind will be awakened again in a certain scene, in the reflection of a bridgehead river, and then fall into silence again.

As he approached home, the sky was getting overcast, and John played barefoot in the yard, walking diagonally along the left side of the yard fence in the way he was accustomed to, until he reached the kitchen window, touched the masonry under the window with his hand, trotted along the fence facing west in front of him, stopped in front of a pile of pomegranate flowers, and then moved slowly in the northeast corner.

Representative Foley doesn't remember when John became interested in the yard, walking barefoot in the blue strappy shorts that his grandmother bought, the pants gradually climbed up from under the knees, revealing two round knees, John's skin is very white, and his blue eyes and white skin look like a robot doll in a children's show.

John didn't see him, paced to himself, frowned slightly, and suddenly relaxed, and ran around merrily. For the first time, Foley looked closely at John's walking, as if watching the blue shorts turn into close-fitting swimming trunks, John grew up, participated in the first swimming competition in college, the pair of small knees became solid and powerful, and the straight thighs had thicker hair than his own, which really made the girl scream, Foley laughed for a long time, until he saw John, who had not grown up, fall under the kitchen window with a pop.

He wanted to rush up and pick him up, but John was faster, standing there neither at the window nor at the broken palm, where the skin was clearly scratched, revealing a little red mark and blood that had not yet ooze. John turned and walked towards the pots, stretched out his index and counted and counted, and it took a lot of effort for him to count the pots, but Forlì could not see any pain or what he was thinking on the face of the little robot doll.

Soon, John seemed to have made up his mind and found the right answer, he bent down and tried to lift a red and white 40cm diameter flower pot, which was a concrete spray paint flower pot, I am afraid that a real robot doll could be carried by his hands. John stretched out his two bare arms and hugged the flower pot as if in a hug, and after a few attempts to no avail, he stood up again.

Representative Foley didn't know what John was going to do, let alone what he could do, John looked around, his expression couldn't be said to be asking for help, more as if he was going to do something bad for fear of someone seeing. Representative Foley takes a few steps back, for fear of being seen by John, but this fear may have been unnecessary, and John looked at it but saw almost nothing, just as a relief from his inner turmoil, a feeling that Foley quickly realized, a feeling that boys had when they were young.

John crouched down again, his arms stretched longer, and hugged the pot tightly, his chest close until his chin rested completely on the pot, and the dirt on the pot almost touched his slightly open mouth as he panted hard.

Moving the pot under the kitchen window, almost as he dragged it along, John stood up and didn't bother wiping the dirt off his chin.

"Victory, little one," says Representative Foley, softly, in a barely audible voice, which John naturally did not hear.

It took a while for the two little feet to stand firmly at the mouth of the pot, in a clumsy posture like an awkward hockey player.

It wasn't until John returned the pots to the warehouse door in the northeast corner and jumped into the house with a sense of relief, that Representative Foley noticed that the lights in the neighbor's restaurant had come on at some point.

Shamer had already had dinner, carrot broccoli with salted macaroni. After seeing her eat a plate of these dinners on Monday, Foley knew that Shamel wouldn't change her dinner variety until Sunday, and that she liked monotonous food and kept it the same for a long time, supposedly to keep her figure in shape. Indeed, Shamel was not at all in her early forties. However, when I was just over thirty-five, I felt that my health was not as good as before after staying up late and working overtime.

Before meeting Shamel, Foley had to make a decision about whether or not to tell her that he was sick, and he couldn't make up his mind. After dealing with the company's emails and solving the problem of the customer's pestering, he remembered the way Dr. Jose spoke. Someone turned on the kitchen light, and John came up to him to ask for a hug, and instead of asking his son why he had to work so hard to carry the flower pots, he carried him to the sink and turned on the faucet, and dipped his hand in some water to help him wipe the mud sticky on his chin.

"Look, it's chocolate." John grabbed his hand as if he had noticed something interesting.

"Hmm, chocolate." Representative Foley repeats the tone of his son's voice.

"But you can't eat it, can you?"

"yes, that's smart."

"Because there were peanuts in it, my mother said I would feel uncomfortable eating it."

"There are no peanuts."

"No, no, you see, there are peanuts in it, but they are ground and smaller, and they are invisible to the eye."

John broke his hand open, and the mixed sand in the dirt he wiped looked a little like crushed peanuts.

"Dad, are the broken peanuts dead?"

"Peanut ......"

Representative Foley puts John down and tells him to call his mother, he can't answer the question, and as he sees John jumping out of the ajar kitchen door, he thinks it's not the time to talk about it.