The teenager stood at the kitchen sink and rinsed her bowl slowly, letting the warm water run over her fingers. The stew had been perfect, thick and rich, the kind of food that settled you from the inside. She wiped the spoon clean, then paused for a moment with her hands resting on the edge of the counter.

She missed her mother’s cooking, in the quiet way she missed most things about Thea. It was never loud. It lived in small moments, like the smell of something simmering, or the way a warm meal could make you feel safe.

Aunt Vee’s chicken stew was different. It was not a replacement. It was its own kind of love. It held the same care, but it carried Vee’s voice and Vee’s habits. It came with teasing, with scolding, with a second serving pushed into her hands before she could refuse. It was comfort shaped by the person who was still here.

Vee dried a plate beside her. She watched Sorianne with a soft look that she tried to hide by focusing on the dish towel. Her heart pinched a little, the way it sometimes did when she saw Sorianne smile after eating. She was glad she could give her that warmth. She was glad she could still be useful. When the last dish was put away and the counter was wiped down, Vee leaned her hip against the table and cleared her throat like she was trying to make the question sound casual.

“Do you want to visit your mom tomorrow?” she asked.

Sorianne’s face lifted immediately. Her eyes softened, and the answer came without hesitation.

“Yes,” she said. “I want to tell her about this year.”

Aunt Vee nodded slowly. She felt a familiar mix of tenderness and worry.

It had become a ritual since Thea passed. Every year, on or near Sorianne’s birthday, they went to her grave without fail, to give Sorianne a place to put her words. It let her speak without being interrupted. It let her feel close to her mother in a way that didn’t demand logic.

The place made sense too. St Ives had its old parish church right in town, with a churchyard that had been used for centuries. It was the kind of space that felt quiet even when the town was busy. Sorianne always spoke to Thea’s grave as if she could hear her. She would tell her about school, about Matilda, about paintings she had started and never finished. She would talk about tiny things too, like a neighbour’s cat or a new book. She sounded like a girl reporting back to someone who mattered.

It made her feel steady but also made Aunt Vee uneasy, in a way she never showed.

Sorianne was still young. She knew the fact of Thea’s death. She had lived with it for six years. But Vee sometimes wondered if the truth of it had fully settled in her, the deeper kind of knowing that changes how you breathe. Sorianne carried grief in a quieter way, and that quietness could fool people into thinking she was fine. Sorianne was a good kid. Too good, sometimes. She never demanded things. She rarely asked for more than what she was given. Vee saw gratitude in her, and she loved that about her, but it also made her want to grab Sorianne gently by the shoulders and tell her she was allowed to want.

Sorianne tilted her head. “Do you think Uncle Trunde will join us?”

Aunt Vee snorted, immediate and blunt. “Your uncle will join if there’s food after.”

Sorianne laughed, a real laugh, light and unforced.

“I mean,” Sorianne said, trying to sound fair, “he does like going to eat after.”

“He eats like a hungry dog,” Aunt Vee replied, shaking her head as if she had been suffering for years. “Trust me. It’s better if it’s just us two.”

Sorianne covered her mouth as she laughed again, shoulders shaking slightly. Then she nodded, still smiling.

“Okay,” she said. “Just us.”

Vee’s expression softened. “Good.”

Sorianne said goodnight a few minutes later. She moved upstairs with that quiet tiredness of hers that comes after a full day and a full heart. The house settled behind her. Vee stayed downstairs, finishing the last bits of planning at the table. Her lists were mostly done now. She had the flowers arranged, the cake confirmed, the food planned, the small details under control. She liked control. It made life feel safer.

Trunde was in his armchair, slumped in a way that made him look like he had melted into it. A newspaper lay across his lap at an angle that suggested he had fallen asleep mid-page. Vee stared at her husband for a second, then muttered, “Who still reads newspapers anyway,” with the kind of judgment she reserved for things that made no sense to her.

She walked over and nudged his shoulder.

“Trunde.”

He jerked awake, eyes wide, body tensing like he thought he had missed something important.

“I’ll take out the trash,” he blurted out.

Vee paused, then gave him a look that was half amusement, half disbelief.

“Even in your dreams, you can’t even take out the trash.,” she said.

He blinked, then groaned when he realized what happened. “Shut it.”

Vee crossed her arms. “Get upstairs. You’re snoring like a tractor.”

“I don’t snore,” he argued, pushing the newspaper aside.

“You do.”

“I’m still young,” he insisted, like youth was a legal defense. “We’re in our thirties.”

Vee squinted at him. “And I have bad eyesight now.”

Trunde opened his mouth, then closed it again when she pointed at him.

“And you complain about your back,” she added.

He gave up with a tired exhale, because fighting with his wife was never worth losing sleep over. He stood, stretched in a way that proved her point, and shuffled upstairs.

Five minutes later, he was already in bed.

Vee moved through the upstairs hallway quietly. She stopped at Sorianne’s door and opened it just a crack. The room was dim, lit only by a small night lamp. Sorianne was asleep, face turned toward the window, hair spread across the pillow. She looked younger when she slept, like the world hadn’t had a chance to ask anything of her yet.

Vee closed the door gently. Then she walked to the sunroom.

The smell of paint lingered faintly, mixed with the clean air that always found its way into the house near the coast. She stepped closer to the easel and studied Sorianne’s work.

It was incomplete, but it was beautiful.

The colours had depth. The light had honesty. The sea looked calm without looking empty. It reminded Vee of her own paintings, and it reminded her of Thea, too. It wasn’t because this art is a copy of her sister’s style, no, but because it carried the same kind of attention. The kind of attention that meant the painter was truly looking, not just seeing.

Aunt Vee’s throat tightened.

Tomorrow, she would tell Sorianne the truth that Thea had asked her to deliver. It would change Sorianne’s life, even if Sorianne didn’t understand that yet. Vee wished she could wait. She wished she could give Sorianne a few more years of normal, a few more years where her biggest worries were school projects and friendships and what to wear.

But she had promised her sister.

So she would do it. She would guide Sorianne through it as carefully as she could, with patience and firmness and love. The kind of love that did not run away when things got hard. Vee stood there a little longer, looking at the painting, letting herself feel everything she usually kept buried.

Then she turned off the sunroom light and went to bed, carrying tomorrow like a weight she was willing to hold.