This Lifetime. | Edward Heffron

XII.

Amelia sat herself down once again on the floor beside her grandmother, taking the old woman's hand in hers. "He seemed to be happy," she said, and her grandmother looked down and smiled.

"Yes," she paused, "And I was happy for him, but every time I read his letters, I would cry. They made me realize how far away he really was, and it hurt."

Her mother stood by her door frame, taking in the sight of her daughter curled up in bed, the letter from Babe pressed to her chest. Eleanor's eyes were puffy and red from all the crying she had just done.

"El," her mother whispered, sitting at her bed, placing a tender hand on her shoulder. "Bad news?" she asked, stroking her daughter's hair gently.

Eleanor looked up and shook her head. "Good news," she plainly replied, sitting up and curling up under her mother's arm. "It's just that I miss him, and only now have I realized how far away he truly is."

Her mother didn't reply, but bit her lip. The two of them sat in silence as Eleanor continued to cry, and her mother's heart continued to harden.

┈┈

Over the course of a few months, Eleanor continued to write to him. Despite every letter she had received, she continued to cry each time she read his reply.

They had all learned about the failure of Operation Market Garden, and Eleanor almost fainted when she had learned that it was his company in the attack. She was no longer patient when awaiting his replies. Instead, she paced. She wrote. Paced. Wrote. Relapse.

While at work, she would talk to anybody and everybody, trying to gather information about what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Everyone noticed her becoming frantic.

Her mother walked in one day, noticing the stack of papers that served as her letters to Babe. "Darling," she whispered, concern plastered all over her face, "You gotta eat something, El. I made banana bread."

Eleanor grunted, then turned to face her mother, her eyes swollen yet again."I don't know why he hasn't written back yet." she said, "What if something happened to him?"

"Eleanor," her mother gasped, seeing her face. She held her daughter's hand and pulled her onto the bed, "There's no use thinking like this. I mailed his letter just a week ago. You need to calm down."

Eleanor scrunched her eyebrows and exclaimed, "I can't calm down! I don't know what's happening and no one will tell me anything."

Concerned, her mother smoothed out Eleanor's hair and sighed. Her other children were growing scared as well, seeing how frantic their eldest had become. Max had stopped trying to enlist for the army altogether, but she wasn't complaining.

"I'll bring you some food," was all her mother decided to reply, standing up quickly. Before she headed downstairs, she watched as her daughter, once the strongest in their household, fall apart in front of a stack of paper.

She decided to take matters into her own hands.