𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞; eugene roe ✔

PART EIGHTEEN

Word count; 2,064

Valentina

The sunshine returned a few days later. Since then, everything slowly started to come together once more. Teo was close to recovery, still endlessly tired due to nights covered in sweat and restlessness but bereft of urge to vomit everything he ate. Sascha vanished a couple of times during the day but, like we had done before the Americans arrived, we still all collected in her tearoom, Emilia included. I would sit in my same usual seat, staring at the coffee in front of me with some foreign distaste. Everyone else would drift in, in their own times, and converse like nothing had changed because in reality, it hadn't. We were all still the same people.

But something in me wasn't.

The same way I had felt since the war began had returned and, with it, the solemnity. I made an effort to stay home more, to interact with the people I knew as family, aware it was unfair on them all for me to dedicate my time elsewhere. It gave space for them to do as they pleased and feel safe which I couldn't blame. But that meant it had been four days since I had spoken with Eugene. He had come around the day after he told Winters of Teo's predicament. I was asleep when he did, only realising he ever showed when I heard the front door shut and I looked out of my window to see him strolling across the street. Later on, Sascha told me all he had done was speak to Teo. She didn't know what on and Teo wouldn't let out any hints either - still refusing to speak German.

I rested my heels on the chair across from me beneath the table, eyes scanning through the last page of Martin's book, when Teo removed the seat and sat down himself. Playfully, I jerked him with the tip of my shoe, observing a smirk on his lips. The sunshine poured into the room, igniting every piece of furniture it could find with joy given the fact it had returned.

"Is it good?" Teo probed, directing a finger to the novel in my palms.

"I cannot translate this one word."

He held out his hand. Without a second thought I gave it over.

"Parsi-mon-ious." I pronounced, not sure how to say it. "I have no clue what it means."

Teo studied it closely, "Parsimonious... like," He thought on how to describe it. "Unwilling to spend money. Here it says: his father always was one of parsimonious intentions - he wouldn't even grant himself a beer. So the father is unwilling to spend money on a beer."

"I see."

"Who is this father?" Teo passed over the book.

"The main character is a women - it is her adult son when he became a father. This is his son narrating how his father could never afford things."

"And how does it end?"

"I have not got that far yet."

"Read it to me."

I stared at him, almost bargaining with myself, but then traced back to where I had left off. "His father was one of parsimonious intentions - he wouldn't even grant himself a beer. And that fact always left him dwelling as all of his friends had fathers who loved beer and whiskey; all his friends had fathers who gambled down at Checkers Street; all his friends had fathers who worked at the docks. But his father was the outlier. His father was raised by a woman who was isolated by society, a woman who fought time and time again to make things right but never could. His father was an adult before he was a kid. He would never understand why."

I didn't move my view from the last sentence, not for a while. Teo had made himself a cup of tea before he sat down and gently placed it back on it's saucer, not bothering to take another sip.