Chapter 1175: Chapter 1175: So Little Brother Xie Is a Lollipop Dispenser

Back when Leah was living in the cabin, she’d already found it a little strange: three rooms, and one of them was always locked, never once opened.

Maybe Richard Shaw often came to this room—the wooden window was half open, a white gauzy curtain billowing in the wind. The spacious room was simple and bare, without any furniture. There was only a woven straw cushion on the wooden floor; it must be where the man often sat, the cushion already a bit worn.

The room was spotless. On the bookshelf against the wall, rows of woven straw storage boxes were lined up neatly, each with a label marking the time and the items inside.

Leah casually took down one box and opened it. A label slipped out. She bent to pick it up and saw the man’s powerful, vigorous handwriting: "On Alaric Howard’s wedding day, she wore a red dress, stunningly beautiful, completely outshining the bride."

Leah looked at the few photos inside. The Howard Family wedding was very lively. The photo was a group shot: the old matriarch of the Shaw Family and the old matriarch of the Howard Family, surrounded by a crowd of young socialites. A young woman in a red dress stood in the middle, her features strikingly delicate and beautiful, her smile dignified and graceful, and she looked exactly the same as Leah.

She bit her lip and looked at the next label: "Our first fight after the wedding, she smashed our wedding ring. I searched for ages before I finally found it in a crack in the cabinet. After that, she never wore the ring again."

Leah opened the red box and saw the pigeon-egg diamond ring lying quietly inside. She picked it up and slipped it onto her finger, letting out a soft sigh. As expected, the size was a perfect match—not too big, not too small.

Putting the wedding ring back where it belonged, she looked at the dates written on the box again, her gaze stopping on the last one.

Back then, everyone had kept their mouths shut about the incident. For no reason, she suddenly thought of the nightmares she’d had before.

In the last woven box was a diary, thick and heavy. Leah’s eyes flickered. She took the diary out, slipped it into her own bag, then closed the window and turned to leave.

She didn’t even know why she’d taken Richard Shaw’s diary. By the time she drove back from the Suburban Outskirts to the little villa, dusk had already fallen.

After she turned off the engine and got out of the car, she saw a young boy outside the villa door. He was bundled up in a thick navy padded jacket, crouching under the streetlamp with his head down. When he heard the car shut off, he quickly looked up, a flash of delight crossing his pretty little face. "Mom, you’re back?"

When Leah saw him, her eyes grew slightly moist. She reached out and pulled him into a hug, her voice soft. "It’s so cold. Why are you out here instead of going inside?"

She thought of the days in Nanyang, when this child would wait for her outside the door too. Back then she’d only felt an inexplicable fondness for him—so this was what blood being thicker than water felt like.

"I’m not afraid of the cold." Classmate Casimir Shaw grinned, but he was too embarrassed to say that all the snacks he’d brought had been tricked away by Benjamin Leclair. He’d been thinking about going out to buy more. But this was a villa district; there were no snack shops nearby. Old Shaw had dropped him off and gone back to the Shaw Mansion.

So classmate Casimir could only stand at the door and wait for Mommy.

Casimir tugged on Leah’s hand, his face flushing red. "Mom, I want to go to the snack shop and buy some snacks for Benjamin and Nicholas."

In winter, it got dark early. Night had already fallen, but there was still a while before dinnertime. Leah smiled slightly, patted the boy’s shoulder, and said, "Come on, Mom will take you to buy some."

Leah drove him to a nearby upscale mall. They went into a snack shop, and she let him pick out whatever he wanted.

"Benjamin loves lollipops the most, especially big soft ones. Nicholas doesn’t like sweets; he likes meat." Casimir stared at the pretty, delicately wrapped lollipops and couldn’t move another step. He actually loved sweets too.

"Then pick three of each snack," Leah said with a smile, seeing how torn he was in front of all the sweets.

Casimir’s big black eyes suddenly sparkled. "I get one too?" he asked in surprise. Old Shaw never let him eat too many sweets.

"Of course. Our Thomas can buy whatever he likes." Leah affectionately ruffled his hair and laughed.

The ten-year-old (by traditional age) boy instantly blushed a little, joy bubbling up in his heart. So even now that he was grown, he was still Mom’s baby. But being called Thomas was really embarrassing—Benjamin called him "Benjamin" all day long; if he was "Thomas," wouldn’t that make him just like a four-year-old little brat?

Whatever, snacks were more important. Casimir happily picked out all the snacks he wanted, taking three of each, filling an entire basket. Then he took a coin purse from his backpack and went to the register to pay.

Seeing this, Leah couldn’t help but chuckle. The Shaws had only one child in each of the last three generations; Casimir’s allowance was probably quite generous. Letting a boy be independent from a young age wasn’t a bad thing.

When they got back to the little villa, Delphine was cooking. Benjamin Leclair and Nicholas Carter were in the living room, one reading and the other practicing his penmanship.

"Brother, I don’t know how to write this." Benjamin pushed the copybook over to Nicholas, her big black eyes looking at him pitifully.

Nicholas looked up from his book and saw it was a tracing copybook for writing characters. His little face showed a hint of difficulty. "Benjamin, this is just a practice book for writing. You don’t need to think about it," he said.

Benjamin’s handwriting looked like a turtle crawling across the page.

Even though she’d only just started kindergarten, the little girl already recognized quite a lot of characters. After Ignatius Leclair had seen Nicholas’s handwriting and then looked at hers, he couldn’t bear to look directly at it. He’d bought her special copybooks to practice with.

Benjamin pouted her cherry lips and tugged at Nicholas’s clothes in a spoiled little act. She just didn’t want to practice her writing. She was only four.

While Nicholas was stuck in a dilemma, classmate Casimir on the side had already burst out laughing. He called out brightly, "Uncle Ignatius, you’re here too?"

The moment Benjamin heard that Daddy was here, she instantly yanked her little notebook back, sat up straight, and pretended to practice seriously.

She pricked up her ears and waited three seconds, but didn’t hear Daddy’s voice. Benjamin instantly realized she’d been tricked. She flung her pen far away, her pretty little face turning to Casimir as she huffed coquettishly, "Bad Casimir, you’re mean."

Casimir shook the big, pretty cotton candy in his hand and teasingly asked, "Benjamin, who’s mean?"

Benjamin stared at the beautiful cotton candy, fluffy and layered like snowflakes. She swallowed and smiled sweetly. "I’m mean. Casimir, is this pretty cotton candy for me-e-e?"

Casimir was struck right in the heart by the little girl’s sweet smile and handed the cotton candy over without even thinking. "There’s lots more. My mom took me to buy them. But I used my own allowance," he said with a grin.

The young boy patted his backpack, full of swagger. "Casimir’s rich. You can eat as much as you want."

Benjamin’s big black eyes lit up. Wow, so Casimir was actually a lollipop dispenser.