Describe an NPC who is important to your character's story. Is this person still a part of your character's life? What are your character's feelings towards them? Have those feelings shifted, or have they always been constant?
[meta]
Vera Beenhakker is born in 1971, when Inge is twenty five years old. She holds her daughter and it is the best thing that has ever been held by her hands, the best thing she will ever hold.
Look, there was never a doubt whether Inge loved her daughter. This was an undeniable fact, something that was a part of her the same way Vera had once been a part of her. She loved her daughter. Sometimes love is not enough. Sometimes love is not all a child needs.
Vera grew up with a father who worked and hated his life and a mother who didn't and hated hers. She grew up with a mother who suffered from night terrors for the first eight years of her life, making her a creature of dark-rimmed eyes and skittish movements. Maybe there was never a chance for her to have a good mother — maybe Sanne took it, maybe Inge let her take it. That's neither here or there. This is about Vera.
Vera, who moved from Wanneperveen to Amsterdam when she was eight. Who didn't understand these city folk at first but grew to understand them. Who was loud and daring and funny. Who missed her father and hated him at the same time. Vera was ambitious and bright, went to university. Vera was angry.
Vera had a mother who was wrapped up in something she wasn't allowed to understand. Something her mother tried to keep her from, and whether that was out of protection or out of an unwillingness to share, neither of them knew. Vera had a mother who would disappear at night, and return without opening the door. Who covered the keyhole to her daughter's door, with no explanation.
Vera didn't understand, but maybe she did. Her mother was in love with another woman, and that woman had done something to her. Changed her. (That Sanne had killed Inge, Vera didn't figure out, but she knew well enough.)
Vera studied, got a good job, got a boyfriend. Never got kids, because she knew that motherhood wasn't a fit for all. (It hadn't been for her mother.) She didn't see much of her mother, after a certain point, and when she did, she looked the same. Never a day older. Always with new jewlery. Always over the moon, ecstatic, but never glad enough to stay.
Vera hated her mother. Vera hated her father. Vera loved them both. Vera died with them in the room when she was thirty six, three years older than her mother had been when she had died.
(Vera asked her mother for the truth and her mother gave it. Her mother helped her sleep with a soft touch. Her mother held her, listened to her, spoke to her. She was loved and she loved in return. Time may have ran out, but there was always that — that love.)
