Chapter 9.

Revelations – Part One…

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“Whoa! Did you know any of this about your Grandfather?” Kate asked me with tears in her eyes.

“No,” I replied with a lump in my throat, this revelation was a complete shock. “He always acted as if Grandma was his first and only love.”

I placed the book down on the table in front of us. Scarlett seemed like such a special person, to lose someone like that at such a young age was a tragedy, I could only imagine what my grandfather would’ve gone through at the time.

“I never knew that he was in the war,” Kate whispered, still struggling with her emotions. Kate wasn’t an overly emotional girl, so this reaction took me by surprise even though the reason for it was so understandable.

“He never talked about it,” I replied, “But I knew. I found one of his medals when I was snooping around as a kid and asked him to tell me a war story. He growled at me and told me that war wasn’t glorious and that medal meant nothing to him. Shortly after that, he sold all his medals and war paraphernalia to charity.”

“It must’ve been horrible. He was always so happy to spin a tale, I can’t imagine him refusing to tell one.”

I nodded towards the book, “Perhaps we’ll learn more about it in there.”

“You can now reveal the painting behind curtain one.” Mr Kimura stated.

I’d forgotten that he was there, just sitting there across from us, he hadn’t spoken once while we’d read the story.

I nodded to him, stood up and pulled Kate up beside me. We climbed the stairs and stepped towards the first curtain, I reached out with my hand to pull the curtains aside and hesitated.

“Go on, ya chicken!” Kate laughed at me.

“Alright!” I laughed, giving her a playful shove.

I grabbed the curtain and pulled them apart revealing a stunning painting of a beautiful, fiery redhead that I could only assume was Scarlett.

The painting was on four canvases, one close-up showed Scarlett in her nurse outfit, the other close-up had a more seductive look to it, of the two full-length paintings, one showed Scarlett wearing a nice formal dress, her hair was up in a bun and she looked so happy, her eyes sparkled just how my grandpa had said they did and that smile was for lack of a better word… perfect. The second full-length painting was somewhat unexpected, it was a rather artistic body shot and Scarlett was… completely nude.

“Bahahaha!” Kate burst out into fits of laughter, “Your Grandfather was a perv!”

“Oh, my god Kate!” I chuckled, “Way inappropriate!”

“What?” She replied, feigning ignorance in between snorts of laughter.

I tilted my head sideways and took in the body shot, “I’d go there.”

I got a solid punch to my arm for that comment, “Now who’s being the inappropriate one!”