Page 67 of All We Thought We Knew
“This was mailed on December fifth, 1941.” I glanced at Nash. “Wasn’t that just a couple days before Pearl Harbor was attacked?”
Nash nodded. “I wonder if Richard was there.”
“There aren’t any more letters after this one.”
When I finished reading it, I put it with the others. “Ava Delaney must’ve been a relative. That’s why Mama has her letters.”
“But didn’t your mom say the letters held some sort of secret she wanted you to know?”
“She did, but so far I don’t see anything out of the ordinary about them. I’ve never heard of Richard Delaney.”
I picked up the second bundle of envelopes. “Then there are these, from someone named Gunther Schneider. I’ve never heard of him either. There aren’t as many of these as there are from Richard, but from the dates on the postmarks,” I said, thumbing through the right-hand corner of the stack, “they were all written in 1943, ’44, and ’45.”
Nash nodded as he stifled a yawn.
I chuckled. “I better let you get some sleep. The mystery can wait. We’ll read these tomorrow.”
I bid him and Jake good night and quietly made my way upstairs. After my impromptu nap earlier, I wasn’t ready to turn in yet. I’d enjoyed reading the letters with Nash, so I didn’t want to start on the second bundle alone.
I took the old Bible from the box and stretched out on my bed.
Memories of attending church with Mama and Mark floated through my mind.
Even as a little girl, I’d always been one to ask questions during Sunday school. While the other children sat quietly and listened to the teacher share stories about Moses, David, and Jesus, I wanted to know details.
Why did God let baby Moses live while other baby boys died?
How could David kill a giant with one stone?
What happened to the little boy who gave his lunch of five loaves and two fish to Jesus? I bet he couldn’t believe it when Jesus fed a big crowd with it.
On and on. I’d wave my hand in the air as soon as something popped into my head and keep waving until the teacher reluctantly called on me. Mark teased me about being so inquisitive, but I didn’t care. I wanted to know why I should believe the stories. More than one teacher grew weary of my interruptions through the years.
Why don’t you ask your mother when you get home,they’d say when they’d had enough. Then they’d finish the lesson using flannel board cutouts of Bible characters, palm trees, and plain-looking houses we were sometimes allowed to play with when the class ended. On the drive back to the farm, I would pepper Mama with questions, and she would patiently give the best answers she could.
I ran my fingers over the cover of the foreign Bible.
Why had I never had a childlike faith in the tales found in this book? Mark easily accepted everything it said, but I don’t think I ever did. I believed in God, mainly because it seemed illogical not to, considering the world around us. But like young Mattie in Sunday school class, I still had many questions.
Why does God allow evil to exist?
If he loves his children, why do people like Fred suffer?
Where was God when my brother died?
No, I couldn’t just blindly believe like Mama and Mark. I needed logical answers, and so far, I had yet to get them.
I turned page after page, studying beautiful illustrations when I came to them. I knew the names of the books in the Bible. We’d had to memorize them in Sunday school. But with no understanding of the language this Bible was written in, it was pointless to continue perusing it.
I’d just thumbed through the last book—Das Buch der Offenbarung—when I discovered a small, brown cardboard sheath stuck to the inside cover. It looked like the kind that held our grade school class pictures, with a flap to keep the photograph from getting scratched.
It didn’t take much effort to free it from the back cover without doing damage to either the book or the case. Curious to see what it contained, I was mildly disappointed to find a black-and-white image of a woman standing with each arm around the shoulders of two school-age boys. The group stood outside, next to an old-fashioned, dark vehicle. There was no writing on the back to give clues as to who they were.
Could the woman be Ava Delaney? Maybe. It would make sense, being that the Bible was in the same box as the letters. But I still didn’t know why Mama was in possession of the mysterious Ava’s belongings.
I yawned.
I returned the photograph to where I’d found it and closed the book.
