A girl who got befriended by an old man she once saw getting yelled at by his son went to visit him, as usual, one day, but she found many people gathered at his house. In a great act of kindness, she decided to take in his cat and was rewarded unexpectedly. It was an excellent evening, and Linda Beckham was returning home after a long and stressful day at work. She was a waitress at a diner which meant she had to be on her feet all day long, catering to customers that sometimes thought they could walk all over her just because she was a waitress.
Linda despised it; becoming a waitress had never been her ambition. She wished to attend art school in order to become a professional dancer, but her parents were low-income and could not afford the tuition. They couldn’t help her save money because her mother was sick and her father was only a factory worker making peanuts, the most of which went to offset his wife’s medical expenditures.
Linda had to accept that her aspirations would have to be paid by herself, therefore she began working as soon as she was able to do so in order to relieve her father’s financial burden while simultaneously intending to realize her dreams. It was not an easy chore; there were some difficult customers. Some even turned angry, hurling objects or food around the hall; however, Linda was always polite and restrained, refusing to let anything compromise her ambitions.
“It’s just for a short period,” she would whisper whenever she felt down or at her limit. She never argued, nor did she talk back because she had that in mind. Every day the hardworking girl would take the same route home; from the restaurant, past the butcher’s shop, and two blocks down, an intersection that takes her home. That day, she had just passed the butcher’s shop when she heard screaming on the opposite side of the road. She walked past a bus blocking her view and saw an older man and another man arguing about something.
It seemed pretty intense, and she stood there watching for some moments. “Should I try to intervene?” Linda wondered; however, she knew that she would do no such thing for fear of attracting the younger man’s wrath. He seemed to be the most incensed of the two, and at some point, he knocked the groceries out of the older man’s hands and then left, muttering under his breath the whole time. After he left, she stood there rooted to the spot, stunned by the violence and disrespect. Then she watched the older man bend down painfully to collect his things.
A minute later, she snapped out of her trance and rushed to help him, so they packed the groceries together, and she offered to help him take them into his home.
He tried to refuse, but she insisted. “What kind of person would I be if I let you carry such a heavy load?” She asked him cheerfully, so he agreed to let her do it. As soon as they entered his house, she noticed how shabby it was; there was sparse furniture, and the place was so small that a shack would be a better description.
A few steps in, Linda noticed a black blur run out of one of the rooms and rub against her leg. She would have screamed, but she quickly realized it was just a cat. “What a cute cat,” Linda said as she dropped the groceries and bent to pat it. “That’s Ms. Bun, my companion,” the old man, who had introduced himself as Richard, said. “Wow, that’s a cute name,” she said, listening to it purr. “Thanks, she has been with me since my wife passed away years back, and sometimes she seems like the reincarnation of her,” the man gushed, still obviously in love with his late wife.
He offered her after she helped him put his groceries away, and because she enjoyed his company, she accepted it with glee. After they sat down to take the tea with some snacks he whipped up; the man told her his story. He revealed that his son, Clement, had been the one to spill the groceries. “We’ve been having disputes since he discovered that I left him nothing to inherit after my passing except Ms. Bun, but that’s because she’s my greatest treasure,” he said with a wry smile.
Linda remembered she had to be home to make dinner for her parents, so she excused herself, thanked him for the tea, and apologized for what his son did. The older man seemed sad to let her go, so she promised to visit him whenever she passed by his house on her way home, making him smile happily. The following day at work, she worked herself to the bone once more, but she was also eager to meet the charming older man and his black cat. As soon as her shift ended, she walked the already familiar route, but this time she stopped at the man’s house and knocked at his door.
When he opened the door, she told him she had brought muffins that would go well with tea, and he smiled again. “How wonderful.” He stated. “Come in for a muffin and a cup of tea.” She paid him two more visits in this manner, but on the fourth day, she encountered a large gathering by his house, and then she noticed the ambulance waiting by the curb. Linda sped up her walk and arrived just in time to witness EMTs wheeling a corpse out of the man’s house. She knew it was Jim, and it shattered her heart.
After the ambulance left, people began to scatter, and she was about to go when she noticed his cat sitting quietly on the porch. “What will become of her now?” She asked the man nearest to her, motioning to the cat. “Oh, she? She’ll most likely be taken to an animal shelter, where she’ll have to walk a great distance “He said. “What about the long walk?” She inquired as she watched the man make a beheading gesture that both horrified her and amused him. Linda couldn’t bear the thought of letting the cat suffer that destiny, so she volunteered to take him with her. But, of course, no one else was willing, so she was not prevented.
She brought the cat home and, as she sadly combed it, she discovered it had a lot of dust on its coat and decided to bathe it. She spotted a collar that had been hidden inside her long coat after putting it in the sink to clean it. She noticed letters that read “my dearest treasure” on one side of it. She noticed a bright stone on the other side that seemed to catch the light. While doing her housework, she cleaned the cat and placed the stone on her table, but she couldn’t get it out of her head. When she couldn’t take it any longer, she went to see a jeweler, who confirmed that the stone was not only precious but also extremely valuable.
“How did you come across such a pure sapphire?” With greed in his eyes, he asked her. “I inherited it,” she answered hastily, but as she started to go, he offered her $50,000, which she took immediately. As she walked back home, she came to a halt in front of the older man’s house, and she could almost see his wry smile; then she remembered what he had said. She realized what he meant when he told her back then that Mrs. Bun was his greatest possession. It was her collar, not the cat, despite how much he loved her. Linda resigned her work, paid off her parents’ debt, and proceeded to her dance school to pursue her goals with the money she earned from selling the sapphire.