For the Love of Vee
Copyright© 2025 by DB86
Chapter 15: VEE
“Girl, it’s about time. Where’s my tea?”
I snuck into Barnaby’s kitchen and started boiling water.
It smelled musty, so I opened the windows. He coughed as soon as he felt the breeze, but he was only doing it to be annoying.
Looking back at those years, I didn’t quite remember how our relationship developed. One day he was pointing a shotgun at me, as I had tried to take a can that looked abandoned at the entrance to his property, and the next day, I was sitting in his kitchen drinking tea while he told me about his life.
That first time, I was only nine years old. A lot had happened since then, but Barnaby was still the same white-haired, scrawny-bodied curmudgeon.
“Here you go.” I poured him a steaming cup and noticed new boxes taped to the door. “Did you clean again?”
He nodded and popped a cookie into his mouth. “I found something for you.”
I smiled, although Barnaby’s gifts had stopped exciting me the way they used to. As a child, every discovery meant endless possibilities, but then, my priorities had changed. Or maybe, I was just tired of dreaming with a future that might never arrive.
“What is it? You know I’ve stopped making things up.”
The sweetness in his eyes touched me. That surly old man loved me as much as I loved him, no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
“It’s not that. I’ve checked the boys’ rooms.”
I felt a pang in my chest.
Barnaby almost never went upstairs. When he did, it was to exorcise his own demons. He had seven children, and he barely had any contact with a couple of them who rarely visited him. He was very lonely and imagining him searching the rooms of these boys with whom he had cut off almost all contact, made me angry and sad in equal measure. No parent deserves to die alone. Barnaby was terrified that one day, his heart would stop beating and no one would know until his body was covered in maggots.
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