CH. 30: Leave No One Behind

The silence was disrupted by a call on Aldger's phone.

"Hello…"

He was silent for a few minutes before replying to the one who called.

"Just continue watching the surrounding until she is to return to that place."

With a frown he ended the call.

"What is it?" Noah asked.

"No one was following Heather, no one from their side even though she was so sure that the witch was currently watching her closely," Aldger replied.

"Be careful with your words Aldger," Michelle rebuked him.

Aldger pouted, "It was the truth, Heather was doing the same."

Michelle shook her head.

"Did your guards know of the reason?" Noah changed the topic back to what they were talking about.

"No, they reported that they didn't see anyone following her car after she drove out of Everlasting Park."

Since Heather approached them, finally, on her own. Aldger had already placed two guards that are capable of hiding themselves well and could see from afar. This is so they won't need to get close and be found out by the guards of Amanda that are watching Heather.

Since Heather had the initiative to contact her family, it will no longer be too much for them to start watching over her properly.

"Are you saying that unlike what you all thought, Amanda Porter didn't do anything to follow her?" Michelle was baffled.

They were also following the news about Heather on the internet that they knew Amanda would make her move.

Yet at this moment, were they all wrong?

"For now, I think that is a good thing. It meant that Heather still has more freedom that she had expected," Hunter commented making the others agree.

"So what is going on now?" Noah seriously asked.

The brothers looked at one another before they spoke of the things that Heather revealed to them.

About the promise she made and about someone else being behind Amanda.

"I get the reason she was being stubborn about this marriage," Noah spoke after listening to everything.

As the parents, he and Michelle were the most aware of Heather's stubbornness. It was a character that she had since she was a child.

If she wants a toy then no matter what they do, she will find ways to acquire it. Unlike other children who will cry nonstop, Heather had already shown her capability as a business woman. She would ask things here and there with her parents or grandparents just so she will get that toy.

If she didn't like something, no matter what they do. Hiding it under the taste of another or grinding it to the point of its appearance changing drastically, she will still be able to tell. It was at this moment that she had shown her gift of tongue.

"But I don't get how she can tell that there is someone else behind Amanda Porter, for as long as I can remember, Amanda Porter had been moving on her own," he added.

"I did try looking into it but there was none. Yet when Heather spoke of the fact that the witch doesn't seem as smart as she portray at times, it feels like Heather was right," Aldger replied.

Since he wasn't task with anything, he had taken into his own hands the other matters that Heather was trying to look into.

"For her to know of it yet to continue that act for a year," Noah massaged his temples as he thought of the fact that Heather chose to hide her everything just to be with that person.

'A promise is a promise dad, that is why I never wanted to make one unless I know I will be able to uphold it in the end, or that I know I won't stop until I get to fulfill it.'

She was just ten when she spoke of such deep words.

'There is a reason why a promise has a definition of allowing one to have the grounds of expectation. Expectations are the opposite of disappointment and at times it even entails... trust. If you treat someone as a precious existence or as a person whom you don't wish to be disappointed towards you, are you willing to promise something you can't do? Are you willing to lose the trust of that person?'

Imagining a ten year old defining something so trivial to others as something so deep, he as an adult felt ashamed of all the promises that he can't fulfill.

"Her promises are surely very precious," Michelle couldn't help but to say.

"Very well," Noah started after sighing in defeat.

"Since she had asked your help, I presume you won't stop until you fulfill it but if there is a need, don't hesitate to come to us. Knowing her personality, she won't ask for our help. So I am telling you to contact us, do you understand?"

"Yes, dad," they said in unison.

They are all adults who are capable but suerly there are still things they couldn't do that their parents would be able to do.

"Good, now go on and rest, leave her to us."

It is a friday, and the travel was long. For them to be at the villa an hour after the sun has set, their day must have been jam packed with everything they needed to finish just to free up their weekend.

No one rejected the idea and since they were alreaady tired, and their parents are there to watch over their no-longer-a-child-younger-sister-yet-still-needed-to-be-taken-care-of-since-she-does-not-take-care-of-herself, they can be assure and sleep early tonight.

Michelle took a bowl of porridge before going up to the room where Heather was now sleeping.

Heather, who was about to wake up, woke up when she heard the door opened.

Noah and Michelle smiled dotingly when they saw her open her eyes.

"Why don't you eat for now? Then you can eat your medicine and go back to sleep," Michelle said gently.

Heather felt much much better after all the sleep and medicine and now even the care from ehr whole family.

'Ah seriously, I should have seen this from the get go. I became too focused on my promise, I should really reprimand my first life self,' she sighed in her heart but didn't show it in her face.

Instead she happily accepted the porridge, ate it and felt like crying again.

They were rich but their mother never stopped cooking for them.

The dish she creates was filled with flavor and love, it has tthe gentleness and warmth that melts away all the fatigue they had during the day of activities.

After finishing a whole bowl of it, she obediently ate her medicine but just as her parents stood up to leave her to sleep, she held both their hands.

"Can't we sleep together even just for tonight?"

The two were helpless, it seems that her fever had affected her thinking, she really looks like a child at this moment.

If Heather were to know what they were thinking, she would surely laugh, her fever did not affect her metality at all, instead she simply came back from the dead.

She realized her mistakes and what she regretted the most in her life, and now she just wants to spend more time with her precious family in order not to feel the immense regret she felt back in that dream.

She was even feeling remorseful at the fact that she still died.

She was already a dead person, that is the truth of the matter and that she never got the chance to apologize to them with everything that she had done.

Not a single thing before dying and the last thing she even thought of was actually to get back to fulfill her promise.

She was nothing but a bad person, a bad daughter, sister, a bad family member.

'I'm sorry, I really am, to the you who kept waiting for your daughter to come back home,' she thought looking at her parents.

The events of her first life was still there, she knew it was there. And the pain they felt was still there.

Seeing her childlike attitude and doe eyes, Noah and Michelle could only relent and sleep with their youngest child this night.

'I will make it up to you in this lifetime, all the regrets and pain, every single thing. I can only do it in this life, so God please allow me to do so. Allow me to make amends with my mistakes in this way.'

She sincerely prayed as she lay there holding their hands and drifting back to her sleep.

She had vowed at this moment, there is no more leaving anyone else behind.

Whether the person whom she promised something or to her family, or to the friends she gained through thick and thin.

No one.

She will leave no one behind ever again.