In the next couple of hours, Alyanna Marie and her grandmother became the busiest tandem of the night. After helping her old woman do the dishes at around eight, they went to the ranch to clean up and afterward fed the rabbits. They then moved to the brooding incubator to check if the eggs had hatched already. Quarter to nine, they gathered all their dogs wandering outside and put them back in the barn where they sleep.
After doing all the farm work, they both returned to the house to have a toast of celebration– though apart from Alyanna's visit after a long time, there was nothing else worthy of celebrating.
"I've been waiting for the right time to open the bottle of wine that your Grandpa made thirty years ago. You know our family used to have a vineyard, right? The grapes from that plantation, that's what he used to make some wine," Grandma Violeta mentioned as she walked into the kitchen, going to the pantry cupboard where a bottle of wine settled on the corner of the third deck. In front of it stood an enframed scratchy and tattered family picture of Violeta and Gerald Chavez, together with their only son Denmarc, Alyanna Marie's dad. The three sat on a wooden bench, the couple in their matching yellow gardening gloves and draggled apron, while the toddler in his red knitted sweater. He was hugging the green bottle of wine in his baby arms.
Alyanna followed behind her grandma. As soon as she arrived in the kitchen area, she instantly recognized the vintage photograph. "Which year was this taken?" she asked.
"My sister took that photo the same day your grandpa made his first bottle of wine."
"Is that what Daddy is holding?"
"Indeed, little one."
Alyanna grinned from ear to ear as if being tickled by a feather on her feet. She could not wait any longer. She wanted to taste that wine so bad. She may not be as obsessed as her dad with drinking wines, but she knew she wanted to test it. At least the one that her grandfather made years and years ago.
"I reckon to have a drop of it is like remembering a memory of him," Alyanna whispered in a long, airy breath.
YOU ARE READING
The Only Thing He Left Me
Mystery / ThrillerTold in a third-person point of view starring a second-lead character, this story tackles the writers' fear of speaking up for the truth through writing, the importance of journalism, and the role of writers in keeping the sanity of the society in o...
