Cincinnati, OH – Eden Park – 2000 – Helen Cera watched on, in hopes of being some use in translating the meeting taking place before her.

It was certainly not every day the museum received a call from another partner museum with such a specific, and immediate request.

An audience had been requested with the known-artist, and Cincinnati Art Museum's present conservator in-residence, Daniel Heindl-Bonchurch, soon to leave them as work on the painting he was restoring, Renoir's Brouillard a Guernsey, was nearly completed.

Had the museum requesting such prompt and particular treatment not also mentioned that they were requesting such on behalf of a particularly generous patron of a certain advanced age, things mightn't have come together quite so quickly.

Helen Cera had introduced Mrs. Ellen O'Dell of Albuquerque to Daniel, her hands motioning to accommodate his deafness. Mrs. O'Dell, who was ushered in by her grown daughter, was in a wheelchair, impeccably dressed and put together. Helen noted something ever-so-lightly French in the elderly woman's speech.

This was confirmed during the introduction, when Mrs. O'Dell spoke directly to Daniel in French, and Daniel responded—through Helen's translation of his signing—in English.

"Bonne apres-midi, Monsieur Heindl," said the woman introduced as Ellen O'Dell, assuming any good Guernseyman who could read lips in English could do so even better in his mother tongue. "Do you know me?"

"You are something of a patron of the arts, I am told," Daniel responded through Helen. "You and your husband, that is. The O'Dell name is well-recognized in New Mexico and much of the Southwest for what you have done for the artistic community, and those who wish to learn from it. I, myself, have not had the pleasure of visiting to see your acclaimed collection of Gustave Baumann. He was born a German, was he not?"

Mrs. O'Dell nodded in assent. "One would hate to think such a triviality might be held against him."

Daniel made a non-standard motion, alerting Helen that he was now speaking directly to Mrs. O'Dell's adult daughter. "Your mother is being modest," he told her. "Her own work around the time of your birth was shown by more than one gallery, and her name still comes up from time to time among serious collectors."

Eleri, whose senses were still sharp, thanked him. "You are very kind."

"No, I'm not," he denied it. "I am only honest. An artist cannot afford to be other."

At this her lips closed in a smile. "If we are being honest, then I shall ask you again: do you know me? Know who I am?"

His response again ignored her repeated question. "And your husband, he was also invested in the curation and collection of art?"

At this she laughed. "No. He did not mind my interest, my investment, but he was, he was a doer—not a contemplator-of life. He would not have understood my coming here, to see this in person."

"Mon Pere," added the daughter by way of further explanation as to their presence, "Dad-he did not care for long trips. Maman had wished to travel to Guernsey, but…things have prevented her. So, she determined she would find a way to visit the Renoir while it was still here, on this side of the Atlantic."

"Then, by all means, let me not stand in its light, nor occlude your appraisal of it in any way." Daniel stepped aside.

The daughter pushed her mother's wheelchair closer toward the easel upon which the small painting was set.

After long moments of silence, Ellen O'Dell spoke. "It is very perfect, I think, the way he has captured the fog, the slope of the hillside into the water. There were many such mornings and evenings just so. Your father would have cursed the fog for its damp," she directed to her daughter, "but made clever use of it to hide within." Here she paused and sighed. "I want to smell the sea again. The Guernsey sea—from Peter Port; fish and ripe tomatoes mixed with the biting salt of the sea. There was a time—though it did not last, when fish and tomatoes were plentiful enough for some that they decorated the harbor, for sale. You know," she was speaking to no one in particular, now, "Time was I lie awake later on, when all food had become scarce, dreaming of fresh-caught fruits-de-mer like a fishwife, and round, plumply tempting tomatoes that would ooze out the corners of your mouth when bitten into. I had never even liked tomatoes."

She turned from her reverie, removed her gaze from the Renoir and back again toward Daniel Heindl-Bonchurch, "Do you know who I am?"

This time, in deference, he answered.

A word he signed confused Helen Cera in her translation. Commander, had he said? She requested he spell it. Kommandant? Kommandant!

"You are Kommandant's daughter," he had said, "Elerinne Vaiser."

"And do you hate me for that?" there was a patience to her question she would not have had as a younger woman, and it was possible, even now, that patience was present only by sheer force of will.

Daniel shook his head slowly. "I would be a fool to hate your having a connection over which you had no choice."

"Thank you, then. Thank you for that."

Mrs. O'Dell, whatever her name might have been (Helen's mind still spun at what she had been able to apprehend of their conversation), requested some quiet time and space alone with the painting, and Daniel had ushered the rest of them from his work room, seeing no reason not to agree with such a request. He had, himself, spent long hours alone under the special lighting, memorizing every curve and swoop of Renoir's brush, every variation in the color of the oils.

He felt a strange satisfaction that his restoration of the work had been finished before she had arrived to see it.

Of Eleri Vaiser, he had known as a young boy in his mother's house. He had continued to learn things of her as his sister consorted with both German and Resistance alike during the war years, and following it, his brother-in-law and the man to whom he was made heir, Mitch Bonchurch, in no way kept quiet about the woman his nemesis/friend had shockingly married.

In every way that Mitch—may he rest in peace—was (for many years) horrified at the connection, Eva was unequivocally supportive of it.

"Cherie," she used to try and talk Mitch down from his hysteria, "she was a girl with a terrible father, it might have made her into a terrible person, yes—but she loved Marion, she loves Allen. You need only look at him when he speaks of her to see all she means to him."

"And that it will be the end of him," Mitch would determinedly squeak. "He used to complain to us, you know, about what a pill she was, what a thorn in his side as her father's driver. 'She'll be a danger to this world,' he used to say, 'if her ways cannot be mended'. He had no plans, I assure you, to take on such a time-bomb himself."

"Tush, Mitch," Eva would seek to calm him. "Her name is a sour memory of a horrid time for you. But she is something other for your Dale. You will see. It is so."

And, as often was with Eva, she was right. It was so. Despite the name change, the union of Dale and the Kommandant's daughter had lasted.

Daniel had not met her himself before today. He had heard of, more than kept company with, Mitch's wartime unit and their families, save Robin Oxley, whose family had off and on been hosted at the Downs. Eva, now welcoming mistress of the manor to the visiting Lady she had once served.

A beautiful place for terrible things to happen, Eleri thought to herself as she looked at the oil on canvas. The islands' tranquility dismantled by the arrival of the German war machine.

A terrible time in which to ludicrously find the building blocks of the lovely life she had been blessed to live.

She had mis-spoken, though, in saying the painting was a good likeness, in announcing its perfection.

It was missing something. The blue of Lady Marion's eyes when she wore her chiffon robe of a night. The sparkle of Joss Tyr's cabaret show face paint. The acrid smell of the burning barn that night, the burning tyres as they smoked just before liberation. The shape of the hearth in Mr. Thornton's cottage.

It was an incomplete picture of the islands as she had known them.

It showed nothing at all of a girl lonely for her convent, of lost scarves and late-night dance lessons, found French erotica, and the lips of the most truthful liar she had ever met.

Then again, perhaps it did, in the colors swirling in Renoir's fog-occluded Guernsey sky—like a vision of the future in a Showmen's crystal ball.

Perhaps, after all, it did.

Time had passed, enough that Mrs. O'Dell's daughter said she would go back in and fetch her mother. Daniel followed behind her in order to collect his things for the day.

His deaf ears could not hear the daughter's gasp, but he saw her bend to embrace her mother, back to him in her wheelchair. Caught something of the expression on her face. He turned to go back to the door, where he hoped to find Helen Cera still nearby.

"3-C-1-1," he signed to her. "Emergency."

Helen Cera grabbed for the cellphone at her waist, dialing 9-1-1 as she dashed into the conservancy room. She could hear Mrs. O'Dell's daughter crying, though quietly, speaking to her mother, now, in a stream of French.

"What shall I tell them?" Helen asked, "what aid should they bring?"

Mrs. O'Dell's daughter pulled herself upright. "None," she said, "nothing. She's left. She—I think this is what she wanted, what she was waiting for. Thank you," she said, now in French, putting her hand out toward Daniel, "thank you for being so kind to her."

"You mustn't think of it again, it was nothing," Daniel said, with only a shake of his head and small, easily translated gesture of his hands.

Kommandant's daughter. How the past never truly let one go. How even such a troublesome time of hardship and want could yet grow memories to which one might wish to return.

Abruptly, he knew what he would sketch when he arrived to his temporary rooms that night. The look of aged ecstasy now stilled upon her face, as though the fog formed upon the sea surrounding Guernsey, which caught on the breeze and traveled to the elevated lands had itself caused her face's flush.

...tbc...