3.

~ Arthur poured over his mother's old letters to him. Most of them he read through. Each chronicling a life milestone. His first kiss, his graduation, his wedding day. All of it bringing back memories of his life without the ballerina that had died too young.

"Your mother was beautiful." Ariadne said looking at an old play bill featuring Audrey Daniels in a performance of Swan Lake.

"Yeah, she was." Arthur said sadly. He rarely looked at the old trunk that was full of his mother's yellowed newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, costumes and other things from her life.

Ariadne had never known the almost mythical creature that was Arthur's mother. She was only Ariadne's age when she died of a brain tumor. Leaving behind an 8 year old son who would become the Point Man.

Audrey Daniels had been a rare and exquisite beauty. Her slender frame was like Arthur's. Her legs and arms were long and graceful in a way Ariadne envied.

"New york City Ballet at only 10 years old?" Ariadne said in surprise as she read over the obituary. "She must have been really good."

"Were looking for friends of hers. Clues as to who my real father was." Arthur said pulling the yellowed newspaper away.

"Why don't you ever talk about your mother?" Ariadne asked.

"I didn't really know her." Arthur admitted.

He sighed and looked over old letters.

"I know she loved me, that's it." He admitted.

Ariadne pulled Audrey's trunk closer to her.

"Arthur, let me do this. You're a guy, you won't know what to look for. Besides, your her son, she wouldn't want you knowing her personal love life." Ariadne said with a smile.

Arthur looked as a dried and pressed day breaker rose. His mother's favorite flower.

~ He was a little boy again. Dressed in a navy colored wool jacket.

He remembered going to her dressing room. Down the halls of the ballet company. The other ballerinas fawning over him and patting his head and telling him he was a doll. Their costumes full of color and lace. All the dancers floating like clouds on tiny feet.

His mother's dressing room was surrounded by day breaker roses. The only picture above her mirror was of Arthur. He knew he was her whole world and that she loved him.

"There you are, my sweet boy!" Audrey would sing and pull him on her lap. Her costume so pretty and sparkly.

"You have too much make up on, mommy!" Arthur would say.

He didn't like the dark make up that made his mother look so strange.

"It's so people in the audience can see my face." Audrey laughed. "You don't like mommy to wear make up?"

"No." Arthur said and she laughed.

The little boy loved to visit his mother here. It was a safe place. Everyone loved him backstage at the ballet company. The ballerinas making him dance with them. A man playing piano.

"Come and sit with me, Arthur." The man playing piano would say. He had an English accent and large hands with long fingers. "Sit with me on the bench here and we can watch your mother dance."

Arthur remembered the man's hands perfectly. How gracefully and effortlessly they played piano for the dancers at practice.

"Look at your mother, Arthur. See how beautiful she dances." The man at the piano would say as Arthur would watch his mother float across the floor. Her body moving like water. The other dancers watching her and smiling.

"Look how beautiful your mother is, Arthur." The man said. ~

~ The Point Man blinked and he was back sitting on the floor of the large closet with Ariadne. He started to riffle through the old pay bills.

"What is it?" Ariadne asked.

"The piano player. At practice. There was a man, he would play for practices and..." Arthur couldn't remember his name. Couldn't even remember his face.

He and Ariadne searched through old play bills.

"It would have been for Madam Butterfly. I had to have been five or six at the time." Arthur said remembering his mother's heavy make up.

"There was only one performance of Madam Butterfly." Ariadne said finding the old playbill. "Starring Audrey Daniels and Tomas Ward."

The Architect looked over the picture of the lean, handsome man holding Audrey so passionately. A man any woman would have a passionate love affair with.

"Arthur, are you sure it's not this guy?" Ariadne said looking impressed by the shirtless male dancer with his defined, muscular arms. Her eyes going wide.

"No, I remember him." Arthur laughed. "Tomas Ward was one of the more publicly 'out' gay men. He was one of the key leaders in the first gay pride parades. He was even at the stonewall riots in 1969."

"That's always how it is." Ariadne said bitterly. Her fingers tracing over the handsome jaw and perfect body.

"Sorry us strait men are not such Adonises." Arthur teased. The first real smile to come to his face in weeks.

"It's alright. I guess strait men can't help it." Ariadne said handing him the playbill. She didn't want to look at too handsome and with a boyfriend Tomas Ward.

Arthur looked over the orchestra pit names.

"Who played piano?" Ariadne asked.

"Althea Gross." Arthur said looking confused.

"Maybe you're remembering the wrong performance." Ariadne offered.

They searched through all of the play bills. Althea Gross was the piano player for all the performances and practices.

Ariadne did a quick search on the internet.

"Althea Gross was 98 years old, when she died in 1998." Ariadne sighed. "She was old even when your mother was there."

"I don't remember her." Arthur said sadly.

He remembered a man with large and graceful hands. He remembered long fingers. A man who wore a black tweed blazer. Who smelled of tobacco and who spoke with an English accent.

"Look at your mother dance, Arthur. Look how beautiful she is."

~ The search into Arthur's past was a welcomed distraction. Darcy's treatments took a lot of of the little girl and her parents each day. Darcy would come home, sweating and sick. She would throw up, bruise easily and cry. She would want only Arthur to hold her most of the time. Dominic and Daniel not understanding what was happening to their big sister.

At night, when Darcy was asleep, Ariadne would pour over Audrey's diary entries.

"A boy named Jason Wills kissed her." Ariadne giggled looking over the girlish scrawl of Audrey's diary. Arthur's mother, at 13, had drawn little hearts over the i's of Jason's last name.

"Yeah, I don't think they would have made it that long. And Jason wasn't in the company at the time I would have been..." Arthur trialed off.
"Conceived?" Ariadne offered. "You've fathered three children, Arthur. You know how these things happen."

"I know, but I don't like to think of my mother being the type of woman who..." Arthur let his sentence fade away. Not able to say it.

"Not the type of woman who was a woman? Who was capable of loving a man? A sexy, strong man who loved ballet and music? You're right, no woman could love that." Ariadne teased.

Arthur looked uncomfortable.

"Their hot bodies giving into passion and making a secret love child?" Ariadne laughed as her husband shushed her with a kiss.

"It's just so romantic if you think about it." Ariadne admitted pulling away from Arthur. "Your mother falling in love with the piano player. Her husband not loving her and they had you."

"Maybe. Why did she stay with my dad then? She was miserable with him." Arthur asked returning to his internet search.

"Maybe your real father didn't want a kid. Maybe he was already married." Ariadne offered.

"The man who played piano, he loved her." Arthur said. "I know he loved her."

~ Darcy was getting worse. It was raining as her parents brought her home. The little girl screaming that her body hurt.

"Mommy!" Darcy cried as her face was hot all the time now.

"She needs to go to the hospital!" Ariadne said as she couldn't seem to break the fever.

The Point Man carryied his daughter to the car again as Darcy screamed that everything hurt.

~ In the emergency room they gave the little girl an IV and pain medication.
"Daddy!" She cried as Arthur held her till she went to sleep.

"We're going to have to keep her. The treatments means her immune system has been compromised." The doctor said.

"Keep her for how long?" Ariadne asked after Arthur tucked the thin little girl into bed.

The doctor didn't have to tell them how long. Darcy wasn't getting better. The doctor didn't have to tell her parents she would be in the hospital till she died.

~ "You go to New York RIGHT NOW!" Ariadne shirked in the parking garage a few hours later. They were alone and it was late at night. The Architect's voice echoing through the cave like parking garage. "You go to New York and you get Becky to donate bone marrow! She has to be a match!"

Arthur tried to calm her.

"Ariadne." He tried to say as his pregnant wife was now hysterical.

"No! You go to Becky and BEG her to give Darcy her bone marrow. You do it! You tell her anything she wants to hear, give her money, have sex with her, you get her to save your daughter's life!" Ariadne screamed.