Zhong Hua suddenly smiled, got up and brought a photo frame from the house. There was no photo in the frame, only three shadows—it was from that year in Montmartre, when she was taking pictures of the sunset with her camera, Ah Yu was standing behind her, and the streetlights in the distance stretched their shadows very long. Further away, Lin Wanqing was taking pictures of them with her phone, her shadow falling between the two of them, like a gentle bridge.
“Grandma, look,” Zhong Hua pointed to the photo frame, “this is the three of us.”
Margaret leaned closer to look, then suddenly exclaimed "Oh dear!" and pulled a small tin box from her cloth bag. Inside the box was a yellowed Polaroid photo; the picture showed a corner of the castle's terrace, where Ah Yu was draping a coat over Zhong Hua, and Lin Wanqing stood beside her, a macaron in her hand revealing half of its pink frosting.
"Look at my memory," the old man said with a smile as he wiped the photo. "I thought this scene was really nice back then, so I secretly took a picture of it. I've always wanted to return it to them, but I never expected to run into them here after thirty years."
Ah Yu took the photo, his fingertips tracing the blurred outlines on the photographic paper. Sunlight filtered through the gaps in the grapevines, falling on the photo as if gilding the three young shadows. He suddenly remembered the email Lin Wanqing had sent last year, saying that she had built a school in Africa, named "Three Beams of Light."
“Actually,” Zhong Hua said softly, picking up the lavender on the table and putting the three stems together, “between light and light, it’s never one that illuminates the other, but rather that when they meet, they can make the path brighter.”
The wind picked up again, making the wind chimes ring once more. In the distance, the lavender fields rippled with purple-blue waves, and the aroma of mint tea mingled with the fragrance of flowers on the terrace, like a gentle embrace. Marguerite looked at the two smiling at each other and suddenly said to Pierre, "See, I was right, wasn't I? Good people and good feelings shine."
As the sun set, the elderly couple prepared to leave. Ah Yu helped them load their luggage into the car. Just before Margaret got in, she suddenly slipped something to Zhong Hua—it was the macaron she hadn't finished years ago, carefully wrapped in cellophane. Although it had long since hardened, a faint pink hue could still be seen.
"Keep it." The old man blinked. "Light will age, but the warmth it leaves behind will never age."
As the car drove away, Pierre rolled down the window and waved to them. Zhong Hua looked at the macarons in his hand, then suddenly turned and hugged Ah Yu. The lavender fields in the distance gradually turned deep purple in the twilight, like a gentle sea.
"Tell me," she buried her face in his chest, her voice muffled, "Did Lin Wanqing receive the lavender seeds we sent?"
Ah Yu lowered her head and kissed the top of her head. The person in her arms had the scent of lavender in her hair, which strangely overlapped with the scent of the ginkgo leaf specimen stuck in her hair at that party many years ago.
“I’ve definitely received it,” he said softly, looking towards Africa, as if he could see a person in a white dress scattering seeds into the soil on that grassland. “After all, light doesn’t get lost between lights.”
The wind chimes on the terrace were still ringing, and the three letters on the brass sign gleamed in the setting sun. In the distance, the last rays of sunlight fell on the lavender field, casting long shadows of the three people, like three closely embracing ribbons of light stretching far, far away.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
