Guest- I am glad you liked looking in Toronto with Ken and his parents. I wanted to make sure that Ken was heard in this as well!

Just the same little Jims, he needed to be in this but I couldn't saddle him with Rilla, but I figured Mrs. Anderson might make a lovely friend for her so it came out as such. I love playing with Canon and bending it where it can bend.

September 8th 1914

Dearest Rilla

I hope that Kenneth has relayed my wish to correspond more regularly. I hope you rest easy to know that Owen and I welcome you into the family, whenever you wish to join us officially. While shocked by the situation, we understand and are proud of our son's selflessness to give you stability.

We apologize for not being there, but I understand the delicate nature of the timing. Kenneth has brought along the film roll and got it developed already and I can't believe how much you have changed since the last time I saw you. How much of a young woman you are these days, the delicate bloom of someone who facing the world.

I hope you can grow to see me less of an Aunt and more of another mother, know that whatever the future holds we will always support you in your choices. But you may call me whatever you wish, same with Owen.

Now I wish to send a gift from Owen and me for our support and congratulations, if you have any china patterns you like in particular, please let me know. I know circumstances are far from what anyone wants, but we can still celebrate and try and make this as normal as possible for you. And if I remember from your childhood you loved looking at the china pages of a catalogue?

If you need anything otherwise, though I am sure your parents will provide for you, please don't be hesitant to ask. I know Kenneth plans to allow you access to his account, but should you ever need anything we are here for you.

For now please accept this small gift of our acceptance into this family formally.

Love Leslie

PS: Ken has a matching photo in his pocket watch. I have found it comforting to have a photo

Rilla opens the small gift with curiosity. It's a small compact, of silver with etchings of roses and an enamel cameo inlaid in the middle of it. Inside is a photo of their wedding, her white dress and his grey eyes still look haunted, and it is far from a romantic photo she imagined for her wedding not long ago. She placed it on her bedside table and sighed, looking at the other envelopes. Ken wrote another letter that arrived the day before. He was only gone two weeks at this point and yet he wrote her more than she had written him

She sighs putting it off to the side of her table. She also had letters from most of her siblings, except for Shirley who would be home next weekend.

September 7th 1914

Dear Rilla

I don't know if you wish me to write, but as I am working through the beginnings of my correspondence I keep thinking of you back home. Of all the things I wanted to say at home I couldn't find the words to.

It didn't seem real this past summer, the war so many of the junior and senior boys are gone, leaving just young freshmen and sophomores who went straight to Redmond after Queens.

People ask me if I had a good summer and I find myself stumbling over it. How does one say that their sweetheart left and you watched your little sister get married?

I know you don't like talking about it, which is understandable of course, but as your older sister please know I am here for you. I know what happened, more so than Di does. I mean we understand in our way. Though, given she has never been given the talk you get when you come home after spending hours sweethearting, I don't think Di fully understands. But I understand enough of it and it is not right, or fair of the world.

I mean I've watched you cry out, scream unable to do anything, comfort as Mother or Father did. You shirked away from the smallest of touches. I was useless to you, I was just the naive sister who played pretend and dressed up, playacting with you in the garret. I couldn't help you, I couldn't even wait for you, look for you that night. Wrapped up in my little world of mirth that night.

I failed you as a sister, and now you don't even share the same last name.

It hit me hard, watching you quietly say vows that shouldn't have been spoken for years to come. It hit me the moment I held your hair from your face as you were sick in the morning.

I'm sorry I didn't look for you, I'm sorry that I let my guilt about it keep me from telling you sooner and I hope you can forgive me. I don't want to be a stranger to you, I don't want you to think I don't care, because I do Rilla.

Whatever people whisper, whatever people say, if it makes you cry or scream. Know it is not the truth, that you are worth ten times their worth, and idyll gossip. You are the bravest girl I know, and you are not ruined or broken. You are just you, a person who had something horrible happen to her.

Be strong, and write to me, write to Di…do not think we do not care because we do…we truly do.

Nan

Rilla's brow furrows she didn't think her sister would ever write such a letter, care that much at all. The twins, Nan especially led her own busy life and went about with friends and Jerry most of her time home. It confused her knowing how her sister felt, but couldn't say it to her face.

She didn't even want to read Jem's but she opened the letter, pulling the afghan over her legs more, using the sunlight of the window to read better.

Dear little sister

Father wrote me about the development. It took a few days to come up with how I felt about it. Of course, I know it is necessary given everything and I will thank Ken forever for his sacrifices even though I don't think marrying you is a sacrifice. Truly anyone would be beholden to have you as a wife one day. Though that is the key word. One day.

It shouldn't have been now, you should've been courted and proposed to in a romantic manner. You should have been cherished and begged for.

It should have never happened as it did.

But at least Ken is someone we can trust. I mean I will still beat him if he ever hurts you in any way, but of all the boys around. Ken I can trust, and not like there were many options even if Mother and Father entertained the idea because they hadn't. I know because I asked, but they said forcing a marriage would just be as cruel, but Kenneth Ford offered himself up still. A noble enough thing to do at the end of the day.

So one day when he comes back for you, if he never sets foot in a training camp or this war if it is still around when his foot is healed. Don't be shy or meek, give him a run for his money and make him work for affection. I know you had a fancy for him, I am not blind despite what people think at times, but don't fall in love with him for saving you. Ken is much more articulate and clever than you probably realize. Fall in love for the right reasons and maybe the two of you will work out one day.

I have to go, stay strong and remember that you are the same as you ever were. You are who you always have been, and this summer, this marriage doesn't change who you are. I mean it.

I love you

Jem.

Rilla put the letter down. Val Cartier said the address, he was still in Canada or was when he wrote this.

She looks at Walter's letter next, her stomach rolling at the thought of her silent brother. The last few days before going off to school, the wedding…the dance. He had been all too quiet only sprouting off poetry that seemed angry or annoyed.
Nan and Di often were found in the wee hours of the night looking in during her nightmares. Walter slept through them or stayed in his room

September 10th 1914

Rilla-my-Rilla

We hadn't spoken much since Jem's leaving and following days and whirlwind I want you to know that I am always here for you. I know I didn't behave well after the wedding, and I am ashamed of that.

I am ashamed that I hid away, deciding that I could write to you later to make up for it. Which I regret now. It hurt seeing you so lost, shrinking away from the world, until you went to Ken. One of the first nights we did hear you screaming in the middle of the night, nor Father or mother trying to comfort you.

I failed you as a brother and I failed my country for being a coward. Two greatest failures a man can have.

I hope you can forgive me for whatever part I played that night. Father was right, we should have watched over you, looked harder for you. Instead, we just assumed you got home before us, and ruined everything for you.

I hate the idea that you had to get married at fifteen to make everything right. I hated the sight of you in the spare room curled up to Kenneth Ford. I hate that I played my part in it.

I hope one day you can forgive me for the part I played in your life changing as it did.

I hope one day that your life turns out to be kind to you and that Ken is everything you wish a husband to be. I hope to hell, to your Hades that one day you will forget about this or at least be

I miss you Rilla-my-Rilla, and I do love you as a brother should. I am sorry I haven't been the brother you needed me to be. I will strive to be better for you, for Nan and Di, for everyone.

Walter

September 12th 1914

Rilla

I was in class today reading Thomas Hardy—Tess D'uberville and I was outraged by it, by my classmates. Nan is in another class, otherwise, she would have been too, maybe not so vocal about it. But we were discussing events of the book and sometimes in me just broke. I had been so quick to judge before, it's not my first read-through after all. I mean, I didn't scorn the character but I thought she had been clearly foolish.

I know better now

My professor was going on about something and I snapped in class, shouting out 'She did nothing wrong' and he raised his eyebrows at me.

Suddenly I shelled up. I was going to be telling the class about family issues. So I fibbed a little and said a girl in my village had been…taken advantage of and being good friends of the family I saw firsthand the devastation and horror it caused.

He called me up at the end of class and looked at me. "It wasn't a friend was it.'

I didn't mean to tell him, but he only nodded his head when I shook my mine. He said the reaction to the book is one that is from the heart and one more people should have. Boys tend to glaze over the fact and wrinkle their noses, girls either feel sorry for her or snub her.

He said that whoever the person is, that he hopes they get better and learn to trust the world again.

I couldn't tell him about Ken.

I hope you don't hate me for this. It just came out.

However I have to say my professor is a dream, he has a bad leg which is why he couldn't enlist a lot of professors are old here though, and the few younger ones most likely are unfit for duty. Walter is sulking in his room when he not trying to avoid the questions. Typhus only goes so far, fit enough for school, fit enough for duty some say.

I sent some sketches of some dresses that I saw here for you to show Mother, but also for your paper dolls that you like making. I hope you like them.

Di

Rilla frowns at the letter, confused and angry at the same time. How could Di tell her professor, and her class about it? That wasn't her place at all to talk about it, and she hadn't played with paper dolls for two years!

She doesn't know what to say to her siblings, and who knows where Jem is at the moment.

Instead, she goes to her desk, curls up in her chair, pulls her legs up onto the seat and sits in a way that her mother would not call ladylike at all. She pulls her kimono onto her shoulders grabs her pencil and carefully begins to write.

September 14th 1914

Kenneth

I can't promise I have been sleeping much, but I do eat, it's all I can do is eat every meal twice pretty much because the first will make me ill.

I've mainly been staying close to Ingleside, everyone has departed for school again so it's just me around the house, minus Shirley who visits every other weekend. Or I had been staying close to home until Father sent me on errands.

I've been helping Mrs. Anderson who recently had a baby and almost died from shoddy aftercare according to her father. Her husband is at the front, he went as soon as Britain declared war, and then the baby was born a few weeks later. Either way, Mrs. Anderson is a kind lovely lady, I tidy the house for her and bring her baskets of food from the house or the manse.

She doesn't ask me to look after the baby thankfully, let alone touch it. He's rather an ugly thing honestly but she is over the moon about him. She named him James but calls him Jims. I did take home a half-finished blanket and made some layettes for the little thing. I don't mean to be too vain, but the things she made were quite cheap and sleazy.

Other than that I am at home, or sometimes I go to the manse with Mother to see Una, or Una comes to see me. It's all very lonely really, all my friends no longer speak to me, are no longer allowed to speak to me. Irene Howard acts so haughty and drags them around like she's queen bee. Even letters from my siblings are this strange mix of horror and guilt or things that confuse me more or anger me. Like Di's letter, it was just a letter from her telling me that a book angered her and she told her professor I was the reason why it did.

It often feels like I am in my realm of Hades. I almost wish my siblings wouldn't write me at all if this is what comes from it. Sometimes I lie in bed, trapped in my screams that never come out.

Sometimes…sometime's I wish that no one found me.

I should end this now before it gets even more depressing….I shouldn't even sign this…

Rilla

Hope everyone is still enjoying this, any comments, and reviews are always greatly appreciated and loved if you have the time to tell me what you like about this so far!