Helene was a child during the war and she was a teenager when the war was over. She never talked about the war. She preferred to talk about how the war made her stop school and how people told her that once the war ended she was too old to go back to school. She had survived the war, her entire family survived it yet she couldn't have the one thing that wanted the most; going to school and learn as many things as she could possibly learn. She was still a kid at heart wanting to study while she was entering what was considered to be a proper marrying age. Today we tend to call that puberty.

As a teenager, Helene had her first crush. He was the teacher's brother who came to visit her from time to time. Helene was waiting for him to show up, hidden behind walls and plants just to watch him from a safe distance. Helene lived all her life without finding the courage to talk to him. Life didn't mind that Helene was shy but gave her numerous opportunities to overcome it. She didn't grasp any of them and she spent her entire life regretting it. She got married, she had her children and her children grew up and had their own children.

Helene was coming up with numerous excuses to get close to the house he lived happily married with his own children to watch him one last time from a safe distance the same way she did when she was a teenager. Each time she thought it was the last time because she couldn't know who would die first. She rarely saw him throughout the years but she got to visit his grave since as it turned out, he was the first to die. That gave her some sort of closure. She stopped making up excuses to travel hoping that she would meet him and started talking to her grandchildren about the unsettling grief of unfulfilled love.

"For how much longer are you going to read? The reading never ends. It will always be there. Do you know what won't be always there? Love. Women get to pick their men up to they become 24 years old. As soon as they pass that threshold it's the men who get to pick up them. Pick up. Don't allow yourself to get picked up."