Chapter 34
34
Thalia waits on the Louvre side of the river, one hand resting on the railing, the other on her waist. She wears slacks and a blouse, her red hair loose around her shoulders.
“Thank you for meeting me,” she says.
“Well, it seemed rude to turn down the head of the Muses.”
She manages a small smile, the kind that doesn’t show any teeth. “I want to thank you for all you did for the paintings. Without your help, they’d have been lost, and I’ve been remiss in not extending my gratitude.”
“What else could I do?”
“You could have let the art die.”
“No,” I say levelly, “I couldn’t.”
Thalia studies me for a moment, then nods. “So, you saved it, at great cost to yourself.”
“Yeah.” I watch the water, gray and murky, flowing under the bridge, wondering why I’m here. What I was hoping for. “Yeah.”
Neither of us speaks for a minute, then Thalia breaks the silence. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say with a huff. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“How? How do you love her?”
“You asked before, and I told you already.” I’m not going to flay myself to satisfy her curiosity.
Thalia nods, but then inches closer, her eyes imploring. “Would you mind, though, telling me one more time what it was like?”
It was my everything. It was all my days and nights, and as much as I desperately want to get over Clio, I am ruined for anyone else.
That is the reality. Because there is only—and will only ever be—her. “She made me feel like everything was possible, even when I knew it wasn’t. I felt like the stars were ours.”
Thalia nods, the corners of her lips turning up. “Thank you again.” I shrug, and she says, “I have a gift for you, if you’ll wait a moment.” She pats my shoulder. “Stay right here.”
I sigh, wondering what it could be and if I want anything from her.
Thalia’s gone long enough for me to suspect she’s not coming back. That she was pulled away to some orchestral emergency or poetic crisis. A violin somewhere is weeping away notes, a poem is drowning in the tears of its words.
Finally, she returns, and with her, coming toward me on the bridge, is Clio. She’s wearing jeans and green flats, and she’s so beautiful it makes my chest hurt, but I can’t look away.
All that hope rises in me again. All my wishes rush to the surface.
I can’t let go of them. I can only stand here waiting.
Hoping.
Craving.
Still loving.
“Hi,” Clio says, a little grin curving her lips. Thalia has stayed back, giving us privacy.
“Hi.” I try to keep my voice even .
She looks nervous, but hopeful too. I see a glimmer of it in her eyes, and don’t know what to make of it.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Um, fine.” My brows knit. There’s a point to this, but I can’t begin to guess what it might be. “You?”
She rocks on her feet, heel to toe, something she’s never done before. Uncertainty is so unlike her. “I’m good.”
Now what? I’ve wanted nothing more than to see her again, but here we are, and words fail me.
But it seems I don’t need them, because it’s Clio who has something to tell me.
“I went to see Thalia last night.” She trails a finger along the bridge railing, looking at it instead of me. “We had a long talk.”
Not what I expected, but I’ll see how this plays out. “You did?”
She nods. “Yes. I was happy working again, but I was also troubled.”
I’m swept up now, snared by an idea . . . a notion that this is rushing toward something I have to see. It may kill me . . .
But maybe not.
“Troubled by what?” I ask.
“Memories. I kept thinking about my time at the Musée d’Orsay.”
“And?” I ask carefully, feeling like I’m on the cusp of something fragile.
Another nod. “I would replay them. Whenever I was working. Whenever I was helping artists to feel the love they needed, the memories all flooded back.”
Oh God.
My muscles tighten. I am poised, ready to leap but not sure which way yet.
She meets my eyes now, closer to the unflinching woman I knew. “I kept thinking about our nights. About why I didn’t go home as soon as I could.”
“Tell me,” I say.
Clio swallows, a little roughly. “The things we did are not things Muses usually do. My sisters all agreed. Going to the beach. Rowing boats. Dancing. Having picnics.” Her lips curve into a not-so-bashful grin. “ Other things. ”
My fingertips tingle as if something precious is just out of grasp. “What sort of other things?”
“Kissing. Touching. Being together. Wanting. Those are not things Muses do,” she says. “And every time I’ve worked, every time I’ve put love into art, I kept returning to those nights with you. And I started to feel things I’ve never known before.”
“Like?” I ask, barely a whisper, but audible enough.
“Like . . . missing .”
That word. That one wonderful word.
“I missed you, and it was entirely new and kind of awful.”
I wouldn’t call the sound I make a laugh, but she peeks at me hopefully, then grows earnest again.
“I realized I’m not the same as before. I haven’t been the same since I fell in love with you.”
The last night at the museum, when we parted outside the doors, she was clinical and friendly. She didn’t seem to feel anything at all. That Clio was worlds different from the woman in the painting.
“You remember all that?” I ask.
“I never forgot all that, but it was just . . . a fact.” She tucks her hair behind her ear in such a human gesture my heart stutters. “But when I started working again, it was more than remembering. It was feeling . And the feelings didn’t go away. They’re part of who I am now.”
I hold in a breath. I hold in all the breaths in the city. The potential in what she’s saying hangs before me like a fragile snow globe I don’t want to drop, don’t want to break.
“And so, I went to Thalia to ask her for something.”
I let myself hope.
I hope so much it hurts. But I’ll take it. Because I think maybe, just maybe, it’s the kind of hurt that leads to something magical on the other side.