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Captain Louis Renault Prompt! This was partially inspired by Nancy Drew: Danger By Design and Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box. Pls tag me if you’re inspired by any of this and I’d love to read it! ✉️❤️💌

You clean out deceased people's apartments for a living, but cleaning out your grandmother’s house is the hardest job you’ve ever done. Your mother died shortly after you were born, so your grandmother was the one who raised you and was the only mother figure you’d ever known. You still sometimes catch yourself rereading her obituary that you wrote and submitted. You had it printed in both the newspaper and online, as you’re sure she probably still has some friends who aren’t very tech-savvy.

“….aged 85, who served as Paris’ Director of Public Works for more than two decades, died peacefully in her sleep last Monday evening. A gifted linguist, she spoke fluent English, French, German and Italian by the time she was sixteen. During World War II she worked as a translator for the Occupation, and consequently was charged with collaboration when the war ended in 1945. During her trial it was revealed that she had secretly been working as a coder for the French Resistance, as well. She was acquitted, and worked as a translator for the city of Paris until she became the Director of Public Works in 1973. During her tenure, which lasted until 1995, Ms. L/N paid particular attention to the maintenance and beautification of the city’s public works. She personally oversaw the creation and placement of the monuments that stand today in Square du Vert-Galant park, her admitted favorite. Ms. L/N never married. She is preceded in death by her daughter and is survived by her granddaughter.”

Some people said that during the war she took various pieces of artwork — mostly from churches — and stashed them away somewhere so they wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. Some people said she stole them for herself, and unfortunately the artwork remains lost to this day. No one knows exactly what she took — or if she indeed took anything. She was tried as a collaborator in 1946 and later acquitted and cleared of all charges, but the experience left her quite bitter. She never married, and was a very private person. She served as Paris’ Director of Public Works for more than twenty years, yet not one person has been able to tell you what her favorite color was. In any case, your grandmother was terribly hurt that the city she loved had turned on her like that. After her trial she told the press that the truth of what she’d done during the war resided in her and the person and place she loved the most. And that was that. She wouldn’t divulge her lover’s name to anybody, and never spoke of her wartime activities again. Not even to you, her precious granddaughter.

Two days after your grandmother’s funeral, while clearing out her study, you inadvertently open a hidden compartment in one of her drawers. It’s filled with many, many letters, some of which are unsent. Upon opening one, you see now why she always used to say, "When angry, write a letter but don't send it." It seems this is her angry letter drawer. You also find boxes of hundreds of love letters under the loose floorboards, one of which still remains unopened and is dated only a couple of days before her death. Interestingly, your grandmother’s angry letters and the love letters she was sent are either addressed to or from the same man as this final sealed letter - a Captain Louis Renault. Could this be her wartime lover she seldom spoke about? As you read through them, you feel like you’re experiencing your grandmother’s love story, getting a firsthand glimpse into her past before your mother was born, a time in her life which was still a total mystery to you. In the hours before she died, your grandmother constantly muttered words that didn’t make any sense when put together. What do they mean? Maybe these letters will hold the answer.

You continue reading your grandmother’s letters while on a long bus ride. You’ve just gotten to the part where the Nazis had removed and stolen tens of thousands of “degenerate” artworks from state and private collections throughout Europe. Nazis destroyed some of these works and sold others abroad to help finance their conquest of the continent. Your grandmother wrote that, while she was living in Occupied France, she was a member of the Monuments Men, a group of men and women that was made up of museum curators, art historians, conservators, artists, archeologists, architects, archivists, and librarians who worked during and after WWII to recover and restitute looted cultural treasures. Like hundreds of others, she was recruited and assigned based on her pre-war civilian occupation, and was responsible for protecting artworks, cathedrals, archives, monuments, and other cultural sites in Europe from damage and looting. While the Nazi plundering was being carried out, your grandmother began secretly recording as much as possible, and kept secret from the Germans that she understood German as she eavesdropped and transcribed conversations.

Monuments Men often operated alone with limited resources, but they made do. They found and recovered countless priceless artworks stolen by the Nazis. Paintings, drawings or watercolors, prints, pieces of sculpture, pieces of arms and armor, baskets of objects, cases of objects thought to be archives, pieces of furniture, tapestries, cases of books or similar, and cases of contents completely unknown. She reported that truckloads of paintings and sculptures, pieces of furniture, and large packages of textiles had been removed from coal mines. There was more, but not for her nor her lover and partner in crime, Louis. The police were looking for them and they couldn’t go home. They knew if the Gestapo took either of them, they wouldn’t get a fair hearing. Interspersed in her letters, your grandmother transcribed parts of conversations she and Louis once shared. Some of these letters have darkened spots where the ink is smudged, as if she was crying while writing. Her tears have become immortalized upon the page, in a way. So immersed in your reading, you feel as if memories that aren’t your own are playing out in front of you, as if you’re watching a romantic black and white movie.

“‘But be serious, darling. You are in danger and you must leave Paris.’”

‘No, no, no, no. We must leave.’

‘Yes, of course, we.’

‘The train for Marseilles leaves at five o'clock. I'll pick you up at your hotel at four-thirty.’ Louis then had a look in his eye, as if a thought struck him. ‘Say, why don't we get married in Marseilles? What about the engineer? Why can't he marry us on the train?’ Suddenly I turned away and started to cry. ‘Well, why not? The captain on a ship can. It doesn't seem fair that…Hey, hey, what's wrong, my dear?’

‘I love you so much, and I hate this war so much. Oh, it's a crazy world. Anything can happen. If you shouldn't get away, I mean, if, if something should keep us apart, wherever they put you and wherever I'll be, I want you to know…’ I couldn't go on. I lifted my face to his, and he kissed me gently. ‘Kiss me as if it were the last time. Kiss me,’ I implored him. He looked into my eyes, then he did kiss me as though it were going to be the last time.”

When Paris, under the German Occupation, was no longer a hospitable place for them to return, they followed a torturous route to Casablanca in French Morocco, North Africa. Many activists, artists, spies, writers, and refugees followed a similar route. She and Louis knew this might happen, so they made a plan and decided what to do. She and Louis agreed that he should leave at once, and that she'd close the flat and follow him shortly. He made all the arrangements just in case she didn’t make it aboard in time but they were both fortunate enough to get on the last train leaving Paris that night. It was very close. Your grandmother only made it aboard during the last call, when the train was leaving in less than three minutes.

Louis was a stubborn old fool who claimed that his heart was his least vulnerable spot but, if that were true, then why didn’t he leave her when she was sick in Marseilles and held him up for two weeks while he was in danger every minute of their time? Or why didn’t he leave her in Oran? He told her that he meant to, but something always held him up. She knew he was lying. He loved her very much and she promised that his secret would be safe with her. Falling in love with him was an accident, she never meant for it to happen. With the whole world crumbling around them, they picked this time to fall in love. It was pretty bad timing.

In Casablanca, nobody knew what they had done. Louis was later appointed as Prefect of Police by Vichy, and she became a secretary for the Palais de Justice. They were happy or at least content in their new lives together, though your grandmother often felt homesick and hoped that she could return to her beloved France after the war ended. She wrote with such vivid detail that her words almost make you feel like you’re daydreaming as you try to imagine what this period of time was like. You can’t exactly explain why, but you have such a deep emotional bond to the letters that’s more than just nostalgic or sentimental. You swear you can almost sense exactly what she’s describing. You feel as if you’ve stepped into her shoes and are experiencing it all for yourself, stepped back in time to the WWII era.

You get to know this Captain Louis Renault better and better until you almost feel like he’s a part of your family, even though he’s someone you’ve actually never met. Is he even still alive? You’re uncertain of that. His whereabouts and current status are unknown. You’ve tried to look him up, but all your research efforts have only yielded events during or before the war. He disappeared and fell off the historic record shortly after the war ended, it seems. You have visceral feelings deep in your heart and in your gut that, while your grandmother laid on her deathbed, she most likely wrote her final letter to him uncertain of where he lived or if he was even still living at all. But despite not knowing his fate, she wrote to him anyway, as if she hoped in her final moments that maybe he was still alive and thinking of her in the same way that she was thinking of him.

Based on her angry letters, it seems as if your grandmother hated Louis with her entire being when she knew him in Casablanca, not afraid to speak her mind. She called him a rascal, a scamp, a rake, an indomitable playboy, and more to his face. She confronted and criticized him for his corruption, vices, hedonistic lifestyle, so on and so forth. She once thought he had betrayed her when he worked with Nazis and rounded up twice the usual number of suspects for the German couriers’ murders just to impress his superior, Major Heinrich Strasser, which demonstrated to her both his open corruption and his tendency to not take his job all that seriously. He collected bribes and gambling winnings from fixed games at Rick’s Café Américain despite it being illegal, and she implied that he extorted sex from women in exchange for exit visas.

She knew damn well that men like Captain Louis Renault and his American friend, Rick Blaine, both went through women faster than cigarettes, perfectly happy to drink or screw themselves to death without a care for what went on outside Casablanca. He loved her more than anyone, that was true, but he wasn’t the most faithful. He lived every day as if he could die or be killed at any moment and often overindulged in women, tobacco, and drink. As heated and passionate as their love was, their lovers’ quarrels were of the same intensity. Thus, the tone and language of her letters constantly changed. She’d go back and forth between not wanting anything to do with him, her tone laced in venom just judging by her choices in her wording, until they gradually became less angry and more soft, romantic, or even racy - for the time, anyway.

He wasn’t exactly a youth or a simple personality, but loving this handsome Frenchman was full of wonder, glory, sunshine, and lightning all at the same time. He took her on a few dinner dates at Rick’s, where they shared a bottle of Veuve Clicquot ‘26, a good French wine, according to him. Or he’d ask the croupier, Emil, to bring a bottle of the best champagne and put it on his bill. It was a little game Louis played. They put it on the bill, he tore the bill up. It was very convenient. During these dinner dates, he sometimes got up from the table and kissed her hand, telling her he’d be right back, he was just going to flatter his Nazi superior a little for his own sake. She inevitably had to exchange pleasantries with the Nazis when they stopped by their table to talk to her and Louis.

They were outwardly cordial to Major Strasser, whom she described as a tall, middle-aged, pale German with a smile that seemed more the result of a frozen face muscle than a cheerful disposition. On any occasion when Major Strasser was crossed, his expression hardened into iron. But by this point, it was pretty clear to your grandmother that, like her, Captain Renault had no love for the Nazis and never went all that far out of his way to help them out. He agreed to do whatever would help maintain his cushy position and was fine with his normally extremely controversial behavior of opportunism, but only out of self-interest. He nonchalantly told her so himself that he had no conviction, he often blew with the wind and the prevailing wind happened to be from Vichy.

However, there were subtle hints that your grandmother picked up on indicating that Louis was quietly sabotaging Strasser’s agenda. While they were in Louis’ office with Strasser, he told him there was no way Rick would hide the letters of transit in his café after Strasser suggested a raid to get them, and he subtly reminded Victor Laszlo that obliging Strasser’s offer of a visa in exchange for the names and locations of anti-fascist leaders across Europe would be helping the Nazis destroy Europe. Strasser looked at Renault sharply, but saw only a noncommittal smile on his face. That’s when your grandmother knew he hadn’t betrayed her, after all. Strasser liked to carry dossiers on him but he didn’t have anything on either her or Louis from their time in Occupied France, nor had he uncovered any of the names or locations of any other members of the Monuments Men or the Resistance. And Victor Laszlo, who didn’t betray the names and whereabouts of the leaders while he was in a concentration camp, where the Nazis had more persuasive methods at their disposal, certainly wasn’t going to betray the names anytime soon. Without Laszlo’s cooperation, Strasser had nothing. She and Louis were both safe, for now.

She describes a time in which Louis told her, "In Casablanca, I am the master of my fate,” but was then immediately summoned to kowtow to Major Strasser. In retrospect, your grandmother theorized that Louis’ realization that he wasn’t truly the master of his fate, at least as long as the Nazis had anything to say about it, may have been part of what motivated his later sudden change of heart. His obvious affection for her belied his seeming self-involvement. Although he told her not to count on his friendship and that he was powerless in this matter, he couldn’t hide his feelings for her and expressed his fondness of her. God, he was going to miss her. She held Louis at gunpoint, ordering him to call the airport to hold the last plane to Lisbon for her, to force him to aid her in her escape from Casablanca. She recalls part of their exchange, “Stay where you are, Louis. I wouldn't like to shoot you, but I will if you take one more step. And remember, this gun is pointed right at your heart.”

“That is my least vulnerable spot.”

Unbeknownst to her or Louis, Major Strasser intercepted the phone call to the airport and his suspicions that something was very wrong were raised. He confronted them and tried to stop your grandmother from boarding the plane to Lisbon, but she shot him dead when he picked up the payphone and reached for his own gun. When more gendarmes came mere seconds later, she thought she’d be arrested for murder then and there, but Louis figured that his law enforcement career was up in smoke and there was no point to turning her in. When it came time to make a stand, Louis’ conscience came through in the end and he effectively condemned himself to death to do the right thing. So he said, “Major Strasser has been shot.” A beat. “Round up the usual suspects.”

Strasser's death was clearly caused by either him or your grandmother, with Louis' lie obvious either way. His subordinates could’ve turned them both in for a promotion - something that no doubt influenced his decision to skip town. Instead, the gendarmes carried Strasser away and drove off, leaving your grandmother and Louis alone. As Prefect of Police, his signature was necessary on every exit visa, so he filled in her name to make it even more official and countersigned the papers. They thought of everything. Louis retrieved a pair of fresh cigarettes from a box in his pocket and handed her one before he flicked his lighter open to light his. But instead of using the lighter again, he chain-lit your grandmother’s cigarette with his, as if imitating a kiss.

They were many things together. Monuments Men, spies, comrades, coconspirators, Resistance fighters. But in their final moments at the airport, they were just best friends, lovers simply sharing one last cigarette. Despite their promises to the contrary, they knew that, when they were finished, they would never see each other again. Once their cigarettes burned through and became too short to hold, and they had no other choice but to throw their cigarette buds to the ground and stamp them out, their connection would be stamped out too. At least in this life. They took long drags, the smoke dissipating in the cool night air as they exhaled and took in the gravity of their situation. Their thoughts may have been racing, but they said nothing. What was even left for them to talk about?

They cemented their friendship when they both committed themselves to the Allied cause. She committed by killing Strasser, while Louis did it by disavowing his relationship with the collaborationist Vichy government. He would be neutral no longer. As he poured the water into a glass, Louis saw the Vichy label and, quickly but symbolically, dropped the bottle into a trash basket which he then kicked over. This signaled to your grandmother that he no longer was willing to be the puppet. Ever the follower, Louis copied her when he, too, became a self-sacrificing idealist. He was ready to fight on the side of the Resistance, just like she was, but they couldn’t be together. Fate was pulling them in two separate directions, so they shared one last goodbye kiss and your grandmother boarded the last plane to Lisbon just before it took off. From there she boarded the clipper to America to start her life anew. Unbeknownst to either of them at the time, she took something of Louis’ with her.

She later heard Louis left Casablanca to actively join the war effort against the Nazis shortly after her plane took off. He and Rick Blaine reportedly joined the fight with a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, having both undergone a transformation from cynicism to idealism. She didn’t return to Paris until after the war had ended and she deemed it safe to do so. When she did, she was found to be carrying a baby girl on her hip without ever wearing a ring. People may have gossiped and whispered about her having a baby out of wedlock, but she didn’t care. She loved your mother, her darling daughter and only child, with all her heart. She did everything she could to give your mother a good and happy childhood, one that was free from the burdens of war and the hardships of healing after said war. And when you came to live with her after your mother’s untimely death, she very much did the same when it came to raising you. You were much more fortunate in your childhood, as the wounds the war had left behind had healed by that point.

You look up from your grandmother’s letters when you feel someone staring at you. You suddenly are overcome with intense feelings of familiarity, love, and nostalgia when you lock eyes with this old man, but you don't recall ever knowing him. He’s a total stranger to you…or is he? The old man is of able body as he stands up and walks towards you without use of a cane or other mobility aid, but he grabs onto the bus rails and poles to keep himself steady while the bus is in motion. He politely weaves through other passengers and patiently waits for them to move out of his way until he kindly asks if he may sit beside you. When you nod and say yes, he creakily sits down and asks you where you’re headed.

He looks to be over eighty years old, with wonderfully gnarled, wrinkled hands and eyes that are a warm shade of brown and creased from smiling. His hair is combed over neatly to the side, mostly white with shades of gray speckled here and there, but it’s still full with not a spot that’s thinning or balding. He has a thin white mustache lining his upper lip. All in all, he’s aged rather well. His equally old uniform is crisp and emblazoned with medals, but he tells you that not very many people showed up for the reunion and, of the few that did, even fewer were good conversationalists. He’s one of the last ones left, he supposes. At least in this part of the country, anyway. Following the disappointing reunion, he’s just been wandering around with no set destination in mind and enjoying the fresh air, not quite ready to go home yet.

He introduces himself as Louis Renault and apologizes for staring. He’s sorry if he’s bothering you but he couldn’t help but notice your striking resemblance to a woman he once knew and loved long ago. It’s almost uncanny. Looking at you is like looking at a ghost or being transported back in time to when he was a younger man, in love for the first and last time. It’s him. It’s really him, the man from your grandmother’s letters, in the flesh. When he mentions her name and you prove to him that you’re indeed her granddaughter and show him the many, many letters from him that she’s kept, you’ve earned his trust. Meeting you feels like a divine act of fate. He asks you a poignant question, “Are there some causes so worth fighting for that even love should be sacrificed to fight for them?”

Don’t answer right away. Let it sink in and ruminate on it for a good long while. You ask him about your grandmother’s cryptic words, and his expression morphs into something that tells you he understands exactly what her words mean. He has something very, very important he wants to show you, something he once swore he’d never show anyone. He wants to tell you a secret that he’s kept close to his heart for many decades, a secret he once thought he’d have to take with him to his grave. You ride with him and stop at Pont Neuf, and from there you get on another bus to go to Square Du Vert-Galant Park. As the bus pulls away, Louis begins to weep.

He takes you to a monument that says, “A la Mémoire des Forces Françaises Combattantes”. Underneath are numbers that are movable, but first he takes out a pair of eyeglasses from his uniform’s breast pocket and puts them on. His eyesight when it comes to reading isn’t quite as sharp as it used to be. He punches in the right combination, which reveals a code hidden behind a secret panel. He goes around to the pieces of artwork decorating the park, pieces you know your grandmother personally oversaw the construction of, and turns the cranks certain ways and presses certain buttons until a grate by a drinking fountain moves, revealing a hidden ladder that leads to dark underground caves.

Louis takes out a small flashlight and tells you to watch your step, it’s very wet and slippery. You feel like you’re walking in the caves forever, until you come across a locked chest that holds another key inside. Louis unlocks the chest using a key he’s held on his person and kept safe for decades. Your grandmother entrusted him with this key and he took it with him everywhere he went. It was the best way to keep it guarded and safe at all times. If he had to, he would’ve swallowed it to make sure it didn’t fall into enemy hands. He then takes the other key and tells you to follow him back to the surface, there’s no time to lose.

He tells you to drive him to the old windmill by your house. When you arrive there, you let him inside the windmill. He turns a mechanism, revealing a hidden staircase. That’s been there this whole time?? You follow him down the stairs, through another secret passageway until you’re in front of a locked iron door. Using the key he retrieved from the caves underneath the park, he unlocks the door and tells you to go inside and see for yourself. Inside is what your grandmother stole during the war — stained glass. You’ve lived next to this old windmill your entire life, and these pieces of priceless art have been right in your very backyard this entire time!

In the privacy and safety of this secret underground room, he tells you all about your grandmother, revealing to you the truth about what had really happened during her time as a spy in both Paris and Casablanca: From 1942 until the liberation of Paris, she worked as a translator for the Germans by day and an encoder for the French Resistance by night. This, as you might imagine, made everyone suspicious of her, both French and Germans alike. And after the war, things got ugly. Especially when people found out she was romantically involved with him, back then a poor, corrupt official who served as Prefect of Police in Casablanca, French Morocco. You open a glass container sitting on a pedestal, and open the single letter that’s inside. Not even Louis has read it. He admits that he’s never seen it before and that it wasn’t there when your grandmother and he stashed the stained glass here, so it must’ve been written by your grandmother sometime after her return to Paris years later, when your mother was still just a baby. She must’ve returned here only once to place this letter here, and then never again.

If you are reading this it means that I am dead, and that you have discovered my secret. Yes, the rumors were correct. With the help of Louis Renault, I took the stained glass you see in front of you and hid it, not for personal gain, but so these exquisite pieces of art would not be lost to the dangers of war. I was not a traitor, nor was Louis. He helped me because he knew it was the right thing to do. But why, are you asking, why when the War ended did I not return them? Why did I not even admit taking them? At first, it was because I was angry. After all that I had done for my country, when my friendship with Louis was discovered, people turned against me, and accused me of terrible things. I wanted to hurt the people of France the way they were hurting me, so I said nothing about the stained glass. Then, when at long last I was deemed innocent, my anger subsided, but fear took its place. I was afraid that if I revealed what I had done, the accusations would start up again, and people would once again call me a criminal and question my motives and assail my character, and it would’ve been too much to bear. Louis had gone to join a Free French garrison in Brazzaville, and despite his promises to the contrary, I knew I would never see him again. Like everyone else, I just wanted to get on with what was left of my life. So again, I said nothing. And gradually time passed, and Paris healed, and I healed, yet the right time for telling the world my secret never seemed to come. And now I am Director of Public Works, a job I hold not only because I love this city, but because I wanted to make sure that someone - - you - - would be able to eventually find what I hid. Please make sure these pieces make a safe return to the world above. When you see them as they were meant to be seen, with sunlight streaming through their panes, interrupting the darkness with color and meaning and joy, only then will you truly understand why I did what I did a lifetime ago.

Louis clears his throat and speaks up, making you tear your eyes away from the handwritten pages. You’ve waited all your life for an explanation, for answers, so you listen intently to what Louis has to say. “When your grandmother and I hid these exquisite works of art all those years ago, we had hoped someone would find them, even if it was long after we were both gone. After the war was over, I gave up my position as Captain and became just plain Louis Renault. I never did take my job as Prefect of Police seriously, a fact your grandmother and I both knew well. I no longer wore any of my uniforms and instead opted for much more casual and inconspicuous attire. But I’ve still kept them all. They’re packed away somewhere and I only wear them if it’s a special occasion, like today. While it wasn’t the special occasion I was expecting, this is a much more heartfelt reunion than the one I had attended earlier in the day. Thank God I met you and got to show you this before I went. It was not mere chance or coincidence that I saw you on that bus. Fate brought us together through your grandmother, and now you can take these pieces of stained glass back up to the surface and share them with the world. I’m old. I’m here in the autumn of my life and I probably don’t have much left of a future, but I can at least light a cigarette and breathe out. I can pour a glass of French wine and raise a toast to you. It's finally over.”

“You do have a future. You still have loyal friends like that American, Rick Blaine. And you’re a great man and...and a beloved grandfather.”

“Grandfather? Whose grandfather?”

“Mine.”

“Well, if you are my granddaughter, then my future is bright, indeed.”

You finally give him your grandmother’s final letter, addressed to him. Surrounded by light and beautiful colors of rainbow as the stained glass reflects off his skin, Louis sits on the stairs and reads.

My dear Louis,

I do not know if you are alive or dead, but wherever you are, I send you all my love and kisses. As I write to you, I’m smiling for it is sunrise. The colors of the sky are a kaleidoscope of orange, pink, blue and yellow, and it reminds me of you, my love, and the stained glass we hid a lifetime ago. The rain has finally stopped and it’s going to be a beautiful day, the happiest of happy mornings. When we saw each other last, I knew I’d never see you again, despite our promises to the contrary. You don't know how many times I've thought about you over the years. Although I’d like nothing more than to see you again, I no longer have the strength to do so. But there's one bright spot in this sad story, and that is our lovely granddaughter. It wasn’t until sometime after I landed in New York City that I discovered I was carrying our child. I wanted so much to write to you, to tell you, but for many reasons, some of which you know well, I couldn’t. Her mother died shortly after she was born, but our granddaughter grew up strong and sweet just the same. She reminds me of you every time she smiles. With her around, I could never forget about you, even if I wanted to. My hope is that one day you and our granddaughter will have the chance to meet, that you’ll see her smiling face and she’ll see yours, even if it’s through a stone. You've been in my thoughts since the day we parted. And now, though my time here is drawing to a close, I like to think we'll meet again on the other side. The thought of seeing your face warms my heart. Be well and be happy, my dear Louis. Goodbye, but just for now.

After reading your grandmother’s heartfelt letter, Louis decides to put off his departure for a while. While he will mourn your grandmother and the daughter he never knew he had and never got to know, he‘s been given the chance to get to know you, his precious granddaughter. You’re the last vestige of his lost love, perhaps the last of his family, even. Before he leaves, he wants to learn everything he can about you and form a bond with you. There’s so much that he wants to tell you, share with you. He wants to teach you about life, about love. He has so many things from his past that he’s kept with him. He wants to show you them all, including the many, many, many letters that your grandmother wrote and sent to him before and during the war.

He’s been living alone for quite some time, so he invites you to come to his house so that you may read your grandmother’s letters and see for yourself both sides of their love story. He has plenty of space so you could even come to live with him, if you wanted. He would love nothing more than your companionship, for your presence to fill his house and make it into a home as you cure his loneliness. He’s been living as a bachelor for so long that he thought he’d die single and childless, without anyone to inherit anything from him. He was planning on donating everything he owned to museums or charity, but now that he knows you exist, he’ll revise his will. After he’s gone, all of his possessions, including those from his time during World War I and World War II, will go to you. He believes it to be your birthright, your rightful inheritance since you are of his blood. He kneels in front of the stained glass and looks up, as if he’s praying to the heavens.

“Are you listening, my love? I'Il have to put off returning to your side for a while. There's someone I need to get to know here first. Will you forgive me for making you wait just a little longer, my dear?”

You put your hands on his shoulders, and he reaches up to clasp them in his own hands and gently pat them, thankful for your comfort. “Wherever she is, I'm sure she's very happy for us.”

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