A Glimpse at Chapter 6 of "The Tin Box"

          As the last of the sun streamed into the tree house, something caught my eye among the old beams.  Intrigued, I inspected it further and found that a tin box was hidden in a crevice.  As I pulled it out, I noticed that some of the paint was worn off and it was rusted around the edges.  It was painted a pale yellow with golden crisscrosses and tiny pink and purple flowers.   

          One word escaped from my lips, “Wow!”  We all stared at the old tin box in my hands.  The box had some weight to it so I knew that there was something inside.  We sat back down on our plastic chairs and I handed it to Petra and said, “Open it.  It must have belonged to your mother.”  She gently lifted the small brass clasp and raised the lid to reveal a stack of envelopes wrapped in a blue ribbon.  Heather said, “Holy moly!  How old are those letters?”

          Petra picked up the envelopes and touched the old stamps as she read the addresses.  “These letters are from my great grandmother Charlotte and they are addressed to my mother.”  She looked at the stamps closer, “It looks like they are from 1943.  That’s the year that my grandmother died.” 

          Petra loosened the blue ribbon, took out the first letter, and placed the others back in the box.  Carefully, she unfolded the yellowed pages and glanced at the elegant handwriting.  As she looked it over, her eyes sparkled in amazement.  She handed the letter to me and asked, “Could you read it?”

          I could tell that the letter had been written with a fountain pen by the drips of ink that appeared here and there.   Slowly, I started to read,