A Lady with Letters

I watched a lady every day as she slowly walked past my window at around 8:10 while I was having my breakfast.

However, she seemed a bit slow this year. Now, I was cleaning the garden by the time she reached the post box which was located at the end of the road. There was something very sad about her walk, which made it a bit more uncomfortable.

Three days have passed now and I have not been able to see her go by the window. Now I am starting to talk to neighbors that I have never spoken to before and trying to find out where she is and if she is all right.

Finally someone knows where she lives and I go to the house but a neighbor says she has had a fall and now she is in a hospital.

I sit by her bed for two days during the visiting hours. Eventually the pain medication wears off enough for her to talk to me. I tell her I have seen her go by as I eat my breakfast each morning. I bring her fruit and flowers. She says the letters are an attempt to find her family, who she became estranged from as a teenager. The next day when I give her the sugared almonds, she asks me to get her handbag from the bedside locker. She fumbles about for a long time; it is as if she is mining for truffles or something in the depths of the bag. Finally she sighs, and hands me a crumpled envelope.

Inside the envelope are black and white photos of a family outside a church. I am puzzled and ask her where she got the photos. She points to a teenage girl in the pictures. "That's me." she says. I want to correct her and tell her it cannot be. But why should she tell me a lie, what would be the point. The bride and groom in the photos are my parents; the teenage girl in the pictures is my aunt Marry. I had never met my aunt Marry as I had been told she went to live in Canada before I was born.

Now that I look at her more carefully, I can see that she does