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Page 29.
 Claire (Baby Klara, from so long ago, brief life in another time, another world, who had made a fateful promise to her grieving father Dan as she died). The adult woman Claire had spoken to her father from a parallel world in which she had lived to become a mature, beautiful, and powerful woman. She had returned this one final time to Dan Wilson's world as a messenger, to effect some changes in the world of Hannah and Rob. Target: the truth about Leonardo's famous but enigmatic painting of Lisa Gherardini in the early 1500s, today the most famous and heavily insured work of art in this or any other world.
Messenger Claire was willowy, of medium to tall height, with slender arms and legs. Her delicacy could not hide an underlying robust determination, a strength worthy of Athena or Artemis. She wore a pale dress of no particular color in that sharply cut, almost glassy moonlight. The back, as she sat bending over the desk, was cut low and revealed a row of strong but delicate vertebrae under smooth young skin. She was, in her world, an intellectual, a self-made business millionaire, a wife, and a mother; but she brought none of that along on this mission. She was brave, dauntless, and determined to fulfill this quest and then forever be finished with the world of Rob and Hannah. Now, Claire rested her elbows on the desk and appeared to be thinking.
Her elegant, narrow face looked studious. Golden-blonde hair hung in curving bass clefs (keys) over each cheek, pointing to the corners of her lightly lipsticked mouth. Her hair bounced in curly treble-clefs in the shadows of the room, and in the lunar halo around her finely shaped head.
A moment later, her deeply serious, masterful eyes widened in a lunar glow of inspiration. She became Athena, virgin goddess who fights at the forefront among the fiercest warriors, yet bakes a nice cake and is the most wise among lawgivers. She was Klara or Claire, Moon Goddess, breathing the vapors of Diana and Artemis, but for a moment the helmeted goddess of iron beauty stepped into her, for whom the city of Athens is named, and whose Parthenon (Temple of the Virgin) sits atop the crowning hill.
Klara reached for the Journal her father had written in Heidelberg, which her sister Hannah had brought to Paris. Opening it to the first few pages on this apartment desk, she idly rifled with long, pretty fingers through Hannah’s cup of pens and pencils. Avoiding the pens, which might smear, she chose a hard No. 1 pencil and with that she wrote a few cryptic words in the margin. She half wrote, half-printed in a hand much resembling Daniel Wilson’s. She wrote: Claudette Vervain, 45 Rue de la Belle Ferronière, Paris 75012.
With that, the Classical goddesses vanished, back to their statues all around Paris.
Once again just Klara—Clarity—she rose without a sound. She let the pencil drop, letting it silently drop onto the open page and roll away, falling off the back of the desk and disappearing forever in darkness along the wall to create yet another tiny mystery.
Claire rose and drifted like the wind-blown curtains—a fleeting figure that seemed to float, though her limbs moved as if she were walking gracefully on bare feet, perhaps in another world. She walked a few steps and vanished into the wall, lighter than a cherub’s giggle.
Hannah sighed in her sleep, as if the breeze coming from the window had gently disturbed her, as it moved the curtains with a light touch. Hannah remained curled up in Yves’ embrace. The two sleepers were bathed in moonlight as they slept soundly, with faint smiles on their bright features, and dreamt of masques and bergamasques.
In the morning, Hannah called in sick at work and took a long soak in the tub. She threw on her standard little Parisian summer dress with white heels and a headkerchief, dabbed on light makeup, and took the elevator downstairs. She walked briskly along the sidewalk on her block near Passy, and sat at a table outside her favorite corner restaurant. She ordered a quick breakfast of croissants, butter, jam, ham, and cheese along with strong coffee. Rejuvenated by a crisp morning breeze, she took a walk around the block. Then she went back upstairs to her flat and circled around, doing little of anything, until she focused on the journal lying open on her desk.
Despite all the painful explanations and confessions in Verlorenau, something was missing and incomplete here. What had Daddy said so often as he appeared to want more of life than life was willing to give?
There are more chapters yet to be written in this story…
She read through the sparse, disjointed notes and entries. Nothing was really chronological, at least not specifically by day and date. Sometimes, Dad had scribbled a date in the margin. It was a journal of pain and darkness, composed in Zum Forst near the end of his time in the Army and Germany.
The journal began with the words: “At the Bridge of Regret in Paris, I made the worst decision of my life. I can’t allow myself to regret the joy of having Klara with us, a bright gurgling happy baby even as she was turning blue from lack of oxygen due to the heart condition. Klara made the most of her short life. She was a hero. I somehow have to write down all for her sake and if I have children again, if I get married after my ETS. Leaving here, back to the World, will be a relief beyond description. I will be reborn, walking the streets of Portland where I grew up…”
Children… that’s me and Rob. Hannah rose, slammed the journal shut, and strode around the room. It was painful to absorb even a paragraph of it that he had written amid tears in the dark forest above Heidelberg. She resolved to digest every word of it.
She called Rob. “I started reading it. I can’t read more than a page or so without wanting to cry.”
He said distantly in Frankfurt: “Can you make a copy and FAX it to me? I’m curious.”
“Sure. Two heads are better than one.” She added: “I keep getting the feeling there was something before, like he broke off suddenly. He mentions a Bridge of Regret here in Paris. We know he had a woman here also, whom he abandoned to marry Stana because of the baby, I suppose.”
Rob said: “We have a Journal III and a Journal II. There has to be a Journal I. But where?”
She shook her head. “I’m going for a long walk. We’ll talk more later.”
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