Alfred was on his fourth coffee when there was a knock on his door.
That put it somewhere around lunch time if he had to guess.
"Come in." the scruffy graduate student announced, then again more forcefully. Unlike walls, the doors were shared by every department and so the humanities got as good as the flashy math and computer ones.
A crack of genuine sunlight peeked through the growing space between the door and the wall, radiantly warm compared to the fluorescent buzzing overhead.
At the head was, apparently, the mother, short blonde hair tied up in a ponytail and holding a box in both hands.
She was flanked to either side with her kids, who looked far less enthusiastic,  her taller daughter let go of the doorhandle with a solid clunk.
``Hi, Professor Coontz?''

Not a professor. Not going to be one at this rate, going on year 14 of his Doctorate.
``I'm Jennifer Holliman, I sent you an e-mail a few weeks ago about letters I found?''
It took a moment for everything to click into place. Maybe it was the sunlight exposure that had stunned him.
Alfred did finally catch up, though.
A pale hand reached out and closed the lid of his laptop, then put it beneath the cluttered desk along with his assorted papers.
``Oh! It's just Alfred, I'm not a professor. You were --"
He paused for a second.
The tip of his tongue met with the roof of his mouth as his jaw lowered, making a pop.
``The Lane letters, right? You said your great, great aunt knew the Lanes?''

Jennifer's lips curled back and her daughters, recognizing that they would be a while, began to wander the austere grey room.
His desk. One painful office chair. A less painful chair for guests (someone more important than a student might use that, after all.)
Several bookshelves, bereft of a single volume of interest unless you were studying homefront attitudes during World War I.
They had seconds before they were firmly attached to their phones out in the hallway.
With a space mostly cleared the mother put the box onto the desk and sat down, hands pressed against each-other in her lap.
Alfred gestured and she nodded.
He undid the folded cardboard and delicately laid a sampling of the envelopes on the desk.
``Aren't you supposed to wear gloves?''
``We don't anymore, and these are in good enough shape anyway. You've never held a hundred year book?''
He shouldn't have been surprised when Jennifer answered no.

The bearings of a drawer squeaked, then he set another letter which he'd taken from the archives down.
``Can you tell me anything about the letters, or about your aunt?''
The researcher asked as he began to compare the letter to the envelopes. Not reading, just noting the penmanship.

Aunt Minnie had been a cousin, or second cousin, or something, of Ethel Lane.
She never talked about Ethel, she was already old by the time Jennifer was old enough to ask, but one time there had been a documentary on the First World War on TV and it mentioned Robert Lane.
She mentioned that she knew her wife, they were relatives somehow. Jennifer had forgotten about it entirely until last month when she and her husband were fishing their attic. They lived on the old family farmhouse, she said.
Beneath straw insulation that'd been covered up with fiberglass they found an old looking trunk; the letters were inside of that.
When she'd seen the addresses she remembered what Aunt Minnie had said, Googled Robert Lane, and found the Case Western collection.
``Diana was looking at applying here anyway, so we just decided to make a day out of it.''

Alfred had nodded along during what there was of the story, looking to one, the other, back again.
Thankfully there wasn't enough detail to merit notes, that would all be taken in on the forms.
``I think they're real. They look right to me.'' He set the envelopes down, turning them to face the woman, pointing to the features of Ethel's writing which matched.
``You're willing to donate them like you said, right? I have the forms here.''
She punctuated.