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Page 11.
“We’ll have to find that earlier journal,” Hannah said. “Unless it’s from that unhappy time of his life, and maybe he just burned it when he returned to the USA.”
Rob slowly leaved through the pages. “The first part is sketchy. He doesn’t go into detail about the weather or everything he did…”
She picked up from there: “…He packed thirty years of marriage into a 200-page notebook. That’s not a diary. That’s a record of major events. Like when they got married. When you and I were born.”
Rob pointed. “You’re right, but occasionally he does mention a major emotional milestone. Like here, in 1988 he first met Mom.”
“We’ll each have kids one day,” Hannah said, “and we’ll want to pass this all along to them.”
“And understand what it all means,” Rob added.
Most of Journal III concerned the married years of Daniel and Nancy Wilson. They found a copy of her death certificate taped to a page near the end of the journal. “It ends with him dying,” Rob said. “I have the death certificate, and I’ll tape it in there on the last page, which will close out his Journal.”
“A life well lived,” Hannah said tenderly.
“Except for a mistake early on.”
“We all make mistakes.”
“I know, but he regretted something all his life. Something to do with that woman he married in Germany, and her family.”
“Sounds like a huge, life-changing mistake whatever it was. I’ll bet there are two missing journals and we’ll find themone day,” Hannah said. “Journal I and Journal II.”
Together, they followed the chronology written in Dad’s pressured, uneven blue ballpoint pen. Rob noted that Dad and Mom were both born in Oregon in 1950. They had never met until 1988.
In 1975, as the Vietnam War was ending, Dad finished college on a draft deferment, and joined the Army as a private even though he had nearly completed a Bachelor’s in History. It was a sentimental journey of sorts, because Dan’s father had been a career Army man. A mixed picture also, because Granddad had a reputation for having been a hard drinker, a fighter, and a stubborn man. Smart in some ways, thick as a brick in others. As Rob and Hannah looked closely, some of the blurred writing from long ago seemed to indicate there were two predecessor journals I and II. After a mixture of wonderful and terrible times while Dad was stationed in West Germany before his return ‘back to the World’ (as G.I.s called the United States). The terrible stuff had to be before 1980—including the death of a child, and a divorce—so Dan Wilson had returned to CONUS to start life over virtually from scratch. He had lost or given up everything in the process of separating from the service: a child, a wife, a career (the military, had he chosen to stay), a life (his friends, residence, village, everything of those five years), and so, a good part of his soul.
The German wife was a young woman of Croatian-German descent named Stana or Stanislava. The child that had died was their baby Klara (like the French name Claire). The inlaws hated Americans, and had given him a hard time. The driving force had been this drunken, raving ex-Croatian war criminal hiding in the mountains north of Heidelberg, with his corner blathering and mania (so Dan Wilson had briefly noted in an obscure footnote of his Journal III; no love lost). Except for that one outburst about Mischa Chetko, the father in law, Journal III did not mention Heidelberg directly again. Stana had stayed behind when he left to begin an entirely new life. That was all one could glean from his cursive scribbles.
Dan Wilson decompressed from his agony over the next decade, with some very limited counseling assistance from the Veterans Administration. By 1990, he had stabilized enough, after ten years back in CONUS, to meet, fall in love with, and marry Nancy. In 1990, the twins were born, who were now 30 in 2020. Nancy and Dan had a happy marriage 1990-2018, until Nancy died of leukemia in 2018, age 68. The last pages of the journal contained some odd, scratchy notes in a shaky hand. Last was Nancy’s death certificate, and one more page blank, where Rob was now going to tape Dad’s death certificate. Dad had died in his sleep, aged 70.
As they closed the journal together, and sat pensively regarding its enigmatic covers, Hannah said: “There is more to this story.”
Rob smiled darkly. “Isn’t that what Dad always said? There are other chapters yet to be written?”
She folded her hands and shook her head. “But he’s gone. So the chapters maybe will be what happens in our lives next. That’s the most logical explanation, right?” But she wasn’t entirely convinced by her own explanation. But what else could it mean, unless it was nonsense? They rose and went to join the Gillens in their pleasant activities. Rob, the Professor, and Yves walked up the cobblestone alley to a sports bar to watch the Berlin-Vienna game. Hannah and Elise walked with the boys as far as the sports bar, and then continued their walk in to the pleasant, quiet Old City with its shops and eateries, tree-lined squares and outdoor cafés. The page was about to turn, and the next chapter began to be written.
On a street corner nearby in Luxembourg stood an attractive golden-haired woman in dark sunglasses, with her hands in the pockets of her plum colored raincoat, watching. Though the air had turned gray, promising drizzle by evening, she had an odd sort of glow behind her. A light drizzle seemed not to bother her, nor did any droplets adhere to her.
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