"He didn't reply again," her grandmother said quietly, "I still sent out over 30 pages of questions. If he had seen it, I'm sure he would've thought I was nuts."
"What did you do then?" Amelia asked, resting her head on her grandmother's knee.
Her grandmother shrugged, "I wrote. Not letters, but stories."
Eleanor was once again hunched over her desk, the clock striking past midnight. She had work in a couple of hours, but she needed to finish this chapter. She had been writing again, this time a kids book about the troops. Really, it was a book about how she imagined her Babe on the battlefield.
They were brave, the men. They did not stand down in the face of adversity and fear, but instead joined arms and fought against the evil in this world. Not much older than her, she wrote about their sacrifices, what they all continued to do out of love for their people and their country.
For some odd reason, it calmed her down. Turning off the light, she crawled back in bed but did not sleep. She was wide awake, thinking of what could have been happening in Europe. She laid there, thinking of Babe, and hoped he was thinking of her too.
The troops were now moving deeper into Europe, they all heard. It was almost Christmas, and although everyone was tried to feel the Christmas cheer, she couldn't. Instead, she stuck to herself and wrote about the men Babe had told her about. What she imagined they would be like.
┈┈
Christmas came and went, and still no response. The Christmas tree in the corner of their house still stood there, Eleanor having no recollection of helping them put it up. But really, she had no recollection of a lot of things anymore.
"Goodnight," she called to her mother who was busy fixing up a pair of gloves her youngest brother had torn through while playing in the snow.
"El," her mother replied, "Can you come in here please?" She made her way to her mother's room, and sat at the end of the bed. "How are you?"
That's a weird question to ask, Eleanor thought to herself. "I'm fine," she responded anyway, biting down on her lip, "Why?"
"We haven't heard from Babe in awhile," her mother said, hardly looking up from her knitting, "But Anne says he's doing fine."
So his parents still heard from him? Why hadn't he written her back then?
"I'm glad he's okay," she nodded slowly, but she could hear her heart breaking, "Tell them to give him my regards." Eleanor made it back to her room and shut the door behind her, taking in a deep breath. She would not cry tonight, she told herself.
She cried herself to sleep that night.