proper goodbye, and yet, guardian of these last vestiges of your beloved. Were we not friends, at least, in the end? Did I not deserve a final glance at your beauty? Was our ardor not worth a kiss at the close? I searched for you and searched in vain. Had our friend Delacroix not stayed my hand, I might be searching for you still, would my health allow it. Our dear, loyal friend produced a likeness of you for me. I confess, I needed it not—though my memory fades, your raven hair, your piercing eyes, your lips the color of damask rose are preserved in the amber of my mind. Have I myself not written that the body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever?
All my treasures now have I laid to rest, hidden from the world’s eyes, perhaps never to be found, where my love is evergreen and Paradise blooms eternally for you, my beautiful spirit. That should please you, does it not?
How my own words, now connected forever to you, come back to me again and again, as I have thought of you and what you searched for and the gift you left me: happiness is like the enchanted palaces we read of in our childhood, where fierce, fiery dragons defend the entrance and approach.
It was Delacroix, too, who reminded me of what I am as I sat brooding at the loss of you—neither the mirth nor the ego—but rather, simply, that I am a storyteller. So, my dear, I choose to imagine you in a life content and quiet. Far from the reminders of the past at long last, breathing deeply. How often did you speak of a life by the sea—closer to your own beloved—where you saw him fall, so would you now go that he may rise and rise with you. I see you there, on water’s edge, the soft sound of the waves upon the shore, as the poet captured so perfectly, “a heart whose love is innocent.”
Imagining you in this place, your monsters at last slain, I must confess, pleases me. For what in the end are we but stories?
Ever yours,
Alexandre looks up from his phone and whispers, “Khayyam. What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He reaches across the bar toward me, but I pull away.
I rub my tired eyes. “I don’t . . . It’s . . . private and sad. No one gets a happily ever after in this story, do they? It’s what Dumas said, it’s all turned to ash.”
“But it hasn’t.” Alexandre shakes his head. “Don’t you see? Here we are, talking about them, reading their words. Breathing life into their stories. They live through us.”
I understand what Alexandre is saying, feel it, even, because the proof that the past lives through us is standing right in front of me.
He continues, the strength of his convictions rising. “If we can find the painting and save Dumas’s home and legacy, we can help the story live forever. That’s why we have to go to the Chateau de Monte-Cristo. My uncle thinks if the treasure—the painting—still exists, it could be hidden there.”
“We can’t,” I say, almost catching myself by surprise.
Alexandre furrows his brow. “What do you mean? Don’t you see? You were right all along. There is a missing Delacroix.”
I step farther into the kitchen, away from Alexandre, and shake my head. Anger courses through me—I’m ready to explode and I can’t figure out why. I choose my next words carefully, cautiously. “We can’t go to the Chateau—”
“We have to go,” Alexandre insists. I can tell he’s trying not to yell. “It’s not even a question. Do you have any idea what this could mean? For both of us? Finding that painting—”
I lash out with words that mean to cut him: “It means you’ll use Leila like everyone else did. If there is a Delacroix, your family will sell it for millions more than what you owe in back taxes and get rich off it. Off her.”
Alexandre scowls. “And what about you? It’s not like you decided to pursue this purely because of your love for art history. You want to use this story—my family’s story—to win