Chapter 25
In fact, Diana Swift knew very little about the old affairs of the Hunter family, and only inadvertently knew in the second year of junior high that Josh Hunter had a rather bizarre background-
Josh Hunter and Toby Hunter were wrongly held when they were born.
Diana Swift didn't know exactly how they were wrongly held and how they were discovered when they were seven or eight years old. She only remembered that when she first learned about this, she was so shocked that she couldn't close her mouth.
Because the day before learning about this, little Diana, a junior high school student, had just finished reading a romance novel in which a rich girl was deliberately dropped by a wicked nanny, and the heroine was naturally the real rich girl.
After finishing it, she automatically assumed the identity of the fake young girl, and fantasized: would she be held wrongly? When she was about to get married in the future, the real but evil girl would suddenly appear to rob her identity, property and husband, and then she failed to defeat her by all means, and finally ended up in a miserable and tragic end with no money and no love.
The second feeling was that Josh Hunter was really hateful!
It was said that the idea of the Hunter family in the first place was: they wanted to bring Josh Hunter back home. As for Toby Hunter, after being raised in the family for so many years, he had already developed a very good relationship with them,, so they would continue to raise him as their own child in the future. The two brothers could still be companions, anyway, the Hunter family was not short of this little money to raise children.
Unexpectedly, Josh Hunter would not agree.
His attitude was very tough at a young age, and he stated very directly: If they took him back to the Hunter family, Toby Hunter would go out.
The Hunter family was a family with a particularly old-fashioned ideology. On the surface, it was harmonious. In fact, there was a preference for sons over daughters, direct lineage over side branches, not to mention the distinction between kinship and blood relationship.
Therefore, when the Hunter family was faced with multiple-choice questions, it must be the first criterion to meet the requirements of Josh Hunter, and they gave up Toby Hunter directly without objections.
Toby Hunter was sent back to the George family in X City. The Hunter family also gave the An family a large amount of alimony and suggested that they go abroad. From then on, there was only Josh Hunter in the Hunter family, and no one was allowed to mention Toby Hunter again.
At that time, Diana Swift felt that it would be good if Josh Hunter came back. Why did he have to force Brother Toby Hunter to go away? It turned out that Brother Toby Hunter didn't go to study abroad, but was forced away by this male version of the ugly duckling.
This ugly duckling was too ruthless to be a human being, and how could he be when he grow up?
She genuinely took the role of Toby Hunter and felt sympathy for him, and she also genuinely felt disgusted for the moving iceberg of Josh Hunter, who didn't speak much but act evilly.
This truth could also be said to be the direct trigger of Diana Swift's confrontation with Josh Hunter in her adolescence.
It's just that with age, Diana Swift had matured a lot, and occasionally she could think from Josh Hunter's point of view.
In fact, from the beginning to the end, it was not him who was at fault. No one was qualified to stand and watch the play and appreciate his generosity at the same time.
-
A black car turned around from the airport and drove all the way to the Teachers' Apartment in X University.
The closer she got to X University, the more nervous Diana Swift became. After a while, she would raise a small mirror to check her makeup, and brush her hair, again and again, to make sure it was silky smooth. Before getting out of the car, she also changed into a simpler color of lipstick, and pulled out a trench coat from the trunk and draped it over her body. Anyway, she was ready and looked even more nervous than Josh Hunter.
She had no choice, because she didn't have a mother-in-law, and Richard Hunter was in poor health. Now, most of the time he lived in the suburbs to recuperate and was not allowed to visit. So, she didn't have many dealings with the elders of her father-in-law and mother-in-law.
Jacob George and Olive George raised Josh Hunter for several years, and accompanied him through the simplest childhood in his life. Although they were separated now, there remained a relationship between them.
Rationally speaking, they could be regarded as half her father-in-law and mother-in-law. Moreover, they were professors of X University. When she, the half-daughter-in-law, met them for the first time, she was a little nervous.
Diana Swift was worried about herself, and she didn't notice Josh Hunter's excessive silence along the way.
Standing in front of X University's old teacher's apartment building, she finished her makeup for the last time, groped for the wedding ring from her bag and put it on herself. She held Josh Hunter's arm intimately, like a virtuous and good daughter-in-law.
It's just that she was stumped by the upstairs.
She didn't know how old the X University Teacher's Apartment was. Not to mention that there was no elevator, the stairs were really narrow and small, high and steep.
It happened that Diana Swift was wearing a pair of pointed, thin and shiny high heels. She was tired when she stepped on two floors, but the George family lived on the sixth floor, which was out of reach.
"No, no, I have to rest. I am exhausted."
When arriving on the third floor, Diana Swift was so exhausted that it was hard for her to continue walking. She dragged Josh Hunter and refused to move a step.
Josh Hunter glanced at her, walked down two steps without a word, bent slightly, turned back and said in a low voice, "Come up."
Diana Swift: "...?"
She rubbed her calf, and couldn't believe that he suddenly became so kind.
-
All the way to the sixth floor, Diana Swift quietly observed after getting off Josh Hunter's back: It's strange. I have hardly seen him exercise before, and he didn't even catch his breath when he went up to the sixth floor with someone on his back.
Did he secretly eat power pills?
No, it must be because she was the same on the outside, as light as a canary.
The sound insulation effect of this old apartment building was probably not very good. They just went upstairs, and the anti-theft door on the right with a sense of age creaked and opened from the inside.
A thin and handsome face poked out from the door, "May I ask if it's Josh ... George, brother Josh Hunter?"
The girl was about nineteen or twenty years old. Her hair was tied into a ponytail with black head rope, and she looked like a pure and simple female college student.
Josh Hunter was stunned for a moment, then returned to normal, nodded, and said, "Yes."
The girl looked at Josh Hunter and didn't take her eyes away for a long time. She was even more stunned when she saw Diana Swift behind him.
She had never seen such a good-looking woman in real life. She was so beautiful, and her whole person seemed to be glowing. With her standing here, the price of this building was about to go up.
The girl was dumbfounded, and after a long while, she stammered and led the two into the room.
This house was nearly 140 square meters, which was already the largest set in the entire X University teacher apartment. It was because Jacob George and Olive George were dual-employment professors, and they were qualified to be allocated such a superior house.
But Diana Swift had hardly lived in a house of this size. As soon as she entered the house, she was a little at a loss due to the atmosphere of the age and the cramped space, and she didn't know where to stand.
She looked at Josh Hunter eagerly, but Josh Hunter ignored her. His eyes lingered on everything in this room, with a tenderness that was different from usual.
The goose-like innocent girl welcomed them in without introducing herself or serving tea, and rushed into the kitchen to inform Olive George.
After a while, Olive George, who was wearing an apron and her hair already mixed with silver threads, hurried out of the kitchen.
Olive George should have been a beauty when she was young. Maybe due to the poetic and literary spirit, she had an elegant bookish atmosphere even in ordinary clothes and an apron. But she was not like the returned overseas Chinese who had been immigrating for more than ten years, and had a sense of vicissitudes of life.
There was a lot of dust in the old apartment. The light was cast from the window, and the dust was illuminated in bundles, floating in the air, still.
The apartment was also quiet, except for the faint sound of a range hood from the kitchen.
Olive George stood three or four meters away from Josh Hunter, and almost the moment she saw him, her eyes turned red.
Immediately after, she covered her mouth and looked at Josh Hunter without blinking, her tears rolling down.
Diana Swift didn't know why, but at that moment, her heart seemed to be smashed.
This was so strange. She was obviously a gangster who could laugh while watching pure love and tragic movies, but she just felt inexplicable that if she had a mother who loved her very much, she should look at her like Olive George.
Josh Hunter... She glanced at Josh Hunter.
Expressionless.
Facing the person whom he had called mother for seven or eight years, he was just expressionless.
She felt that it might be difficult for her to find any excess emotion on Josh Hunter's face in her life.
-
At twelve o'clock, the table was set for dinner. Diana Swift hadn't seen Toby Hunter, who had been away for many years, and Jacob George, who should have existed. At the small square table, there were only Olive George, Josh Hunter and her, and Josh Hunter's sister, Sherry George.
When Josh Hunter left, Sherry George was only an one-year-old baby, and the two of them didn't have much brother-sister relationship, so naturally, they had nothing to say.
Josh Hunter was silent, and Olive George was choked up all the time and she could only divert her attention by keeping the dishes, so the responsibility of enlivening the atmosphere fell on Diana Swift.
Diana Swift felt like she was sitting on pins and needles. She didn't know how to call Olive George. She could call like Josh Hunter, but Josh Hunter didn't call. It was not appropriate to talk about the recent situation, and her intuition told her that Jacob George and Toby Hunter were minefields that couldn't be stepped on. She even thought that if she asked Sherry George where she was studying now, she might be able to step on a thunderstorm.
In this case, she could only start the topic of the dishes in front of them.
"This lotus root folder is delicious. I have never eaten it before."
- That's because she never eats fried food.
"This green vegetable is also very fresh and fragrant."
--That's because it was fried with lard, and she would never touch the weight killer like lard.
"This fish is so tender..."
In order to praise the fish with practical actions, Diana Swift took a large piece and swallowed it.
The next second: "Cough! Cough!"
She suddenly grabbed Josh Hunter's arm and pointed to her throat, her face flushed from coughing.
Olive George: "What's the matter? Are you stuck?"
Sherry George: "Sister-in-law, are you okay? Swallow a spoonful of rice with some force."
Diana Swift believed her and swallowed it, but she almost died on the spot without pain.
Olive George hurriedly got up, "I'll go get you vinegar."
Josh Hunter: "It's useless. Let's go to the hospital."
Diana Swift had also heard rumors that drinking vinegar was useless, but she didn't know how long it would take to go to the hospital, so she swallowed two mouthfuls of vinegar first, but she swallowed it by accident.
She was a little relieved to see the three people standing up around her, and the caring words from them.
In order to liven up the atmosphere, I really paid too much.
Josh Hunter, what you owe me must be repaid with an aircraft carrier!