Word Count: 54,025
Summary of Events:
Keeleigh talked with her dad's cousins Frank and Richie about the trunk, which they were getting tired of trying to find, and helped them to set up for the collector's auction without them seeming to suspect her of having the trunk at all. Emil and Zygfryd worked to shore up the walls on the upper floors of the house, which had been damaged by the explosive force of a bomb knocking the house next door into their own. Keeleigh finally had some time to look in the trunk again and found some letters written and signed by a man named Zygfryd . . .
Excerpt of the Day:
"At the end of the letter it was signed Zygfryd again, and when Keeleigh went to return the letter to the envelope she discovered that there was a photo inside.
Pulling it out, Keeleigh looked at it. The young man looked somewhat sober, but still quite handsome. Keeleigh noticed a scar on his right cheek, and that his right ear looked a little bit misshapen, compared to his left ear.
He was dressed in Keeleigh's favourite suit style, three-piece, with a boutonniere, and a kerchief in the suit jacket's upper pocket.
One arm hung straight at his side, and the other disappeared behind the woman he was standing beside.
Her hair was styled in unquestionably 1940s fashion, small curls starting at ear-level and going down to the shoulders, if that, with a small hat covering her straight hair, to which was fastened a short white veil that went over her eyes and nose, but didn't really obscure them because it was a large-hole netting.
She was also wearing an unquestionably 1940s dress, having a bodice that hugged her upper body and smoothly transitioned into an understated A-line skirt that didn't take up too much fabric — keeping consistent with wartime responsibility.
In her hands was a nice, round bouquet, but Keeleigh couldn't tell what sort of flowers made it up, other than that they were probably small baby's breath-types. No roses. Of course that would've been frivolity in wartime, even in Canada.
The young woman's outfit proved conclusively that it was a wedding picture, and it seemed to be a wedding picture of Zygfryd and probably the Helen he was referring to.
Keeleigh turned to the stack of photos and took the one dated 1938 — the most recent one she had — which she held up alongside the wedding picture.
Intently she looked between the two of them, mainly at the young men in the middle of the family picture, and the somewhat more mature young man in the wedding picture.
She couldn't tell which one of the boys Zygfryd was, but she was more than convinced that he was one of them. He was her great uncle.
Setting the photos aside, she went to the next letter, but then stopped, feeling suddenly cold. He hadn't died. If he was alive in 1946 then he'd come to Canada with them.
So then why had she never known him? Why had she never even at least heard about him? Had he done something to alienate himself from the family? What could he have possibly done that would've caused that? Was this Helen he'd married of German blood?
She took up the letter again and scanned it. Not once was Helen's surname mentioned.
Quickly she took up the next letter, which she found was dated 1943, and was chiefly concerned with Olga and Irena again. There was no mention of his wife — or possibly wife-to-be at that time — in the letter."
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