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I called my mom the very next day with so many questions for her, but as expected, she had no anwers for me. How could she? She had never met or even seen a photgraph of her father. My parents were back in the United States, they would be coming to Vietnam in a couple more weeks. Their jobs only granted them two weeks vacation, wheras my vacation from the university were up to three months and I would spend most of them with my grandmother.
Marie still hadn't gotten back to me, and I imagined it was probably hard to gather information on someone when all there was were old army things and a journal.
It seemed like she had told her siblings about me though because not long after our talk, I got friend requests from her two brothers; Theo and Antoine. Almost immediately, both messaged me, wanting to know more about me. They were very nice boys.
When I told my mom that I had found out some information about her dad, the line went silent for a few minutes. I thought the shock had been so much that she passed out, but moments later I heard her sobs from the other line. She was very excited to finally have the opportunity to be meeting her dad.
She remained silent as I explained everything to her.
I told her everything. From the part where I had been snooping in my grandmother's things, to the part where I had looked my cousins up on facebook. And I told her of my plans to travel to France to meet them. They were the only family we had left from my grandfather's side of the family. I wanted to meet them and hoped they had information to give me on my grandfather, the man who had loved my grandmother so deeply.
My mother was slightly upset at the fact that he had been married when he started his affair with her mother and the fact that he had been planning to leave his family in France to be with them. But she knew love sometimes worked that way. One could have been happy with one person, only to later meet someone else and realize they were no longer happy with what they had.
She told me she and my dad would be in Vietnam by the weekend and she would talk to my grandmother to let her know we were aware of everything.
It was a long two days before I saw a new message from Marie.
"I found some more pictures for you." She wrote in her message to me.
"Thank you!" I typed, looking at each picture with excitement.
These weren't pictures of him from the war though. No, they were more personal pictures. Pictures of him and his family.
There were pictures of him as a little boy, with his parents and siblings. The black and white photographs of people with smiling faces brought a smile onto my own face because I could see the resemblence withe my mother. She had the very same smile in photographs I saw of her when she was growing up. There were also pictures of him as a teenager, smiling proudly in front of his first car, and pictures of him on the beach with his family. And lastly were pictures of him, still young and dashing, standing with a young woman, both looking very much in love. She was probably Marie's grandmother.
"You should come to France to visit some time." Marie suggested. "I could tell my dad and grandmother, we'll have a good time as a family."
I smiled at the idea. "That sounds like fun. I'm sure my mom would like to meet her brother and sister."
She and I spent the next few hours on facebook, making plans to meet up in France. But I worried about her grandmother's reaction.
Would she really want to meet us?
We were her husband's other family after all.
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short chapter, but here's an update for you. i hope you all like it. thank you, i love youuu.
-clary xx
