We'll Meet Again (Original Book)

|1| Not Alone

San Francisco, Burgess Mansion, 1936

The bright morning light coming from the window shone atop the upright, mahogany piano, but she wasn't the one playing. Her feet were too short to reach for the pedals. A six-year-old girl sat there and listened quietly with great interest. She was sitting in her mom's lap on a couch nearby an old, dark brown, old, upright piano. The man playing was her father.

She was supposed to be reading a book that he had asked her to read, but she couldn't pay attention to the words written on the ochre pages. She had settled it in her lap, on her little legs and her mom's arms were wrapped around her to keep her safely in her lap.

Nathalie was very smart. She had learned how to read and write very fast, or that was simply what their family was like. The unnatural intelligence of Burgess always started to show at the youngest ages.

"Someone's not focusing on their book," Johannes, Nathalie's father, said with a smile. He was a tall man in his thirties, with Burgess blue eyes and glasses resting at the bridge of his nose. Nathalie was wearing a pair of glasses of her own already. Johannes was still playing the piano. It was not a challenging skill for a Burgess.

The Burgesses possessed basic knowledge that they didn't have to attain. They knew how to cook without ever having to enter a kitchen. They knew multiple languages without needing to open a single book. They knew the basics of every science and art and that included music.

Nathalie gasped when she realised, she had been caught. She turned her attention back to the book, picking it up and hiding behind it, starting to read from where she had left off. The Burgess Family had a library full of all the journals, projects, and books that the previous members of the family had left behind. That book was one of them.

The woman holding her laughed and she took the book from Nathalie's little hands. She snapped it closed and placed it on the tea table right in front of them.

"It's alright. No need to master all basic principles of mathematics in just one day," Amelia, her mother, said. She had short brown hair, big brown eyes, and full, pink lips. She pressed a kiss on her daughter's temple before she stood up. She settled Nathalie on her two feet and took her little hand in her own.

"It's not impossible for a Burgess to do that," Johannes said, stopping his performance for a moment to look up at his beautiful wife and daughter as they approached him.

"Oh, I am absolutely certain that it is," Amelia picked Nathalie up in her hug, before settling her on her father's lap, right in front of the piano. "But I bet our little baby girl wants to learn how to play the piano like her dad, doesn't she?" Amelia leaned down, close to her sweet daughter, bumping her nose with her own playfully.

"Yes!" Nathalie giggled and she threw her little head back to look up at her father. "Will you teach me? Please? Please, please, please, please..." she went on and on and Johannes was certain she wouldn't stop unless he gave in.

"Fine! Fine, okay, you convinced me," Johannes said, and Nathalie laughed and shot a fist in the air triumphantly.

Amelia chuckled and she settled back down on the couch to watch them. They were so precious right there. Johannes began instructing their little daughter on how to place her fingers on the white keys whilst still keeping an arm around her, keeping her securely on his lap.

A smile spread on Amelia's lips as she watched them, knowing that every single choice that she had ever made so far was the right one. Johannes was perfect and she loved him, and she loved their daughter and the little family that they had.

Amelia was a scientist as well. She was a chemist. It wasn't easy for a woman to study anything remotely close to that, but the Burgess Family had established an entire university of their own.