At eighty-two years old, she lives. She resides in a quiet house, a quiet neighborhood, a quiet world. The sounds of children coming home from the local middle school seeps its way into the interior of the graying house, a home of a thousand stories never to be told: a time capsule itself. She listens, tries to feel the last drop of youth in herself. She has lived eighty-two years, was a child when the Second World War reached her doorstep and then left. And yet she is alive.

The living room clock ticks. She is seated on the sofa, her granddaughter beside her when the child asks her what it was like when she was her age.

I cannot possibly remember, she says. Had her childhood years fallen out of memory or had she tried laboriously to forget them over the years? She catches herself eyeing the century-old piano decked with framed black-and-white photographs. She slowly makes her way to one picture frame lined with dust and brushes it off of the glass. A class photograph with numerous faces read: Class of 1938. She remembers. She looks back at her granddaughter, a child full of curiosity, and gently places the picture frame into the child’s hands.

Her name was Anne. She tilted her head back, resting it against the cushion of the sofa and repeated the familiar name in a whisper. How many years had passed since she spoke this name? Anne, she was the Jewish girl in class and was pretty and always had someone to talk to. She went to school each day like everyone else, even after the war soon became reality. Do you understand, my child?

Her granddaughter nods. The girl who sat next to Anne had forgotten to bring her pen to class and was rummaging through her bag when a hand slid under the table to pass her an elegant wooden fountain pen. Anne said, Just remember to bring it back tomorrow. The next day the girl arrived at class, her classmate’s pen in hand. But the seat next to her was empty. It was empty for the week and the week after that. And yet each day the girl walked into the classroom holding a fine, wooden fountain pen.

After two weeks the girl set off to Anne’s house at the corner of the street. The front door was wide open. She called out to her classmate but only unsettling silence responded to her desperate calls. Broken glassware sprinkled on the floor of the kitchen, tables overturned, jewelry dangling on opened drawers. The pen fell to the floor.

The grandmother and granddaughter sit beside each other in silence. After all these years, she still remembers. She wishes she could lift the world to see where her classmate had gone.