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I never met my grandfather.

And I never learned anything about him. It was as though he had never existed, though in the back of my mind there was always this curiousity that made me wonder what he may have been like, what he might have looked like...I remember having asked my grandmother what his name was, back when I was a little girl. She refused to tell me and left the room crying.

Since then, I never asked her about him again because I knew it made her upset.

I had tried asking my mother, hoping she could answer my questions. But she told me she knew nothing of him either. There had never been pictures of him at her house in Vietnam, none of his belongings for her to see, and no one ever spoke of him. But my mother remembered hearing when she was a girl that her mother was a traitor because she had fallen in love with the enemy. That meant my grandfather had fought with the northern Vietnamese during the war.

It was on a day when I was visiting my grandmother, and needed something for show-and-tell project at school that I found something which opened up the walls my grandmother was putting up.

A single photograph, the only one which let me know that person that lived only in my grandmother's memories was real. In the old sepia image was a young woman with ebony colored eyes and long dark hair. On her lips was a smile that showed her happiness. And beside her was a foreign faced soldier with handsome feautures and bright eyes despite the sepia dark of the image. Above his heart was a small badge that was barely ledgible in the low picture quality, but upon close inspection I could make out the letters: A. Griezmann. 

It was his name.

It was in that moment in which I understood why my grandmother had been seen as a traitor after the war. Vietnam had been taken over by the south and they had been seeking independence from the French.

In trying to keep Vietnam as a French colony, the French sent in troops.

The war ended victoriously for the South and my grandmother had ended up seen as a traitor. And looking at him, my mother's features made more sense to me. I had always thought she looked a bit European, or a least not entirely Vietnamese, but I always thought it had been my imagination. I knew about the French influence in Vietnam, but I never thought there would be some French blood running through my veins.

My fingers ran over the smooth surface of the photograph. The young man was also smiling and he had an arm around my grandmother's waist. They looked so young and in love.

Without thinking it further, I took the photograph and left the attic. I went to find my grandmother who was in the kitchen making lunch.

"Grandmother!" I called with excitement, forgetting momentarily that she didn't like bringing up my grandfather.

"What is it?" She turned in my direction with a smile. She had been stirring a pot with some soup and when she caught a glimpse of the photograph I was holding, she dropped the ladel and her face went pale as a ghost. Snatching the photograph from me, but not taking a look at it, she asked me, "Where did you get this, Margaux?"

My smile disappeared in that instant. "I was looking for something in the attic, to show my classmates when I return to America, and I saw that picture..."

"You are not allowed to look in the attic." She scolded me.

But I paid no mind to her words. I wanted to know who the man in the picture was. "Is he my grandfather? It says on his badge that his name was A. Griezmann-"

My grandmother swallowed a lump in her throat and her eyes filled up with tears. "I don't want to talk about it, Margaux."

"I have a right to know him too, so does my mother." I argued.

"I won't talk about this." She refused, stuffing the photograph into a pocket of her apron. "Now go wash up for lunch." She ordered, picking up the ladel and washing it before she continued to stir the soup like nothing had happened.

But I promised myself that I would find out who that man was.

-

ooohhh, very secretive. i had to post an update today because i have already written four of them because i am so inspired with this story. anyway, i hope you all like the first chapter of this story. just to make it clear, the prologue takes place in the forties. and the first chapter takes place in present times ^.^ so yeah, thank you for reading. it means a lot to me. 

-clary xx