What is that, she thought curiously, as she stepped closer to the old rusted frame. She brushed aside the tangles of grass and bush and only then did she recognise her old fish tank. She scowled. So this was where it had gone. Someone had just dumped it into the middle of the woods after all the glass had been shattered and left behind somewhere else.

Inside the tank, there was some kind of a board. She wasn’t quite sure what it was, so she pulled it out carefully. Turning it around, she brushed dust and dirt off it.

She gasped. It was a beautiful painting that her mum had painted years ago. The best one, she had always thought. A tear rolled down her face and she wiped it away absent-mindedly.

How had the painting gotten here? Then the thought cruelly struck her. Her stepmother had thrown out everything she had hated in the house, the day she moved in. Her father working, no one but her had cared. She begged her and cried, but her stepmother threw everything into the back of her cruiser and left. She returned later that day with everything gone. That was the last she had ever seen of any of her mother’s things.

But now she had the painting back, she thought, hugging it tightly to her chest and allowing herself to properly cry for the first time in years.

© 2016

Sunday Photo Fiction, May 8th 2016