Just then, Richard came out with two glasses of iced water and handed one to Kallen. Seeing Kallen looking at the photograph, he volunteered an introduction:
"This is my grandfather. Behind him is my father. On my father's right is my younger aunt, whom you just met. The one on the left is my elder aunt."
"What position does your elder aunt hold?" Kallen asked.
"She died," Richard said. "Before I was born. That's what Grandfather and Father told me."
She died before you were born?
Then where did I come from?
Kallen suddenly realized something: "his" parents had left no photographs behind. Of course, photography might not yet have been widespread back then, but the Immerlis Family could certainly have afforded a family portrait.
Besides, even without photographs, they could have hired an artist to paint their portraits, as ordinary well-off families did. Yet Kallen had found no belongings left by "his" father or mother at home.
In "Kallen's" own memories, since his parents had died when he was little, his recollections and impressions of them had long since blurred. All that remained was the scene he had personally witnessed of his grandfather killing his parents, which had even prompted him to leave an extremely abstract drawing in his notebook.
Even in conversations with Uncle Mason and Aunt Winnie, he could tell that they knew very little about "his" mother.
Much of this was because Uncle Mason and Aunt Winnie had left home early to pursue their own careers and lives. Back then, they probably only made time to return home once a year, and their lives barely intersected with those of their older brother and sister-in-law.
Only several years after the tragedy involving "his" parents had they returned home, one after the other, following upheavals in their respective