Aiya [part 10]

April 23, 2231, two months before his wife’s eighty eighth birthday, he closed himself in his room and kept everyone out.

In June, on Evalonna’s birthday, he left her a note on the counter that said:

I made my masterpiece when I was sixteen, but that was then. Now my life has changed, as has the view from my window.

She smiled at the familiar scrawl and ventured further into the house. Mimicking his show in the streets during his sixteenth summer, Veronni was standing on the coffee table with a line of blanket covered canvases.

“You’re going to hurt yourself up there, old man.” She teased in a lighthearted manner.

“Sit down,” he chided as his hand waved towards the sofa, “I finally made it; my final masterpiece. The New View from My Window.”

He dramatically pulled the blankets off his work and immediately Evalonna burst into tears.

The first canvas showed her when they first met with her hair pulled back and yellow dress skirt whipping around her tan bare legs. Next was their first child, Kaleera, playing in the garden surrounded by explosions of reds blues and greens. The next two were simple paintings of their house and grandchildren, and the final one was a self-portrait of himself wearing an open locket around his neck with a picture of his mother on one side, and Evalonna on the other.