My Dear Shadi,

Running away with Erik was very different the last time around. To begin with, we actually were running away together. That made the trip a pleasanter one, even if it had still been prompted by necessity. We would while the hours away talking about what we would do in the future, instead of studiously avoiding the pain of the past. And then, in reality, we were not running away at all. Instead of trekking through dangerous forests, fearful of detection by anyone, we traveled in first class train compartments. When we would break our journey, we would do so at whatever the best hotel in the town might be. In Dijon, we strolled out early to watch the dawn light play on its grand old Gothic cathedral. In Geneva, we took a whole afternoon to boat out onto the lake. By the time we got to Florence, the first thing we did was not find Erik's old friend, but instead to spend the day in the city's famous piazza.

It was everything I most liked about my life after Persia, and none of the things I disliked. And it was all made better—much better—by having Erik there. It was the element that had been missing ever since I had left my father's house: someone to share my life with. I am not sure which of those words deserves the greater emphasis: share, my, or life. One of them had always been missing before, but now they all came together and harmonized beautifully. No longer alone, no longer a side note to someone else's life—we were both building our lives for something like the first time. We stood together because we wanted to.

He had labored over my name for most of the trip, there being no equivalent to Mojgan in any of the common European tongues. He came up with some rather poetical ideas, but in the end we agreed that my papers should show something more innocuous. Italian, we decided—it would serve us better to have my name seem a bit foreign when we returned to Normandy.

Besides tempering some of Erik's artistic impulses, I did not much care what exactly my new legal name would be. These Latin letters have ever felt foreign to me—the whole concept of a surname was somewhat alien. And, besides, I knew I would always really be Mojgan. And so we ended up one something very ordinary and common, which in turn tumbled into the French Marie-Jeanne after many years anyway. That Italian last name he had used in Rouen served just fine: it was the easiest one for me to pronounce out of his usual options.

Erik went out early one morning, and returned with news that everything would be taken care of in a few days. Anyone who might on the off-chance look at me and ask if I was once la Khatoun who came from some exotic harem would instead be confronted with proof that I was just another dark-eyed signora from the heel of Italy. (Luckily, I was never forced to put my Italian thus to the test.)

The 'artist' (forger, let's be plain) Erik employed for this service also proved helpful in making other arrangements. Erik told him that we wanted to be married quickly and quietly, and the man was able to organize it suitably. He made some cheeky comments on how much we had already been in each other's company, which Erik did not take in good stead, but disaster was averted.

And so I found myself married for the third and last time, this time in some little Catholic parish in Tuscany. The words and rites meant nothing to me, and yet, when I think of all my marriages—it was the wedding that meant the most. I vowed vows under a name that was not mine, but for the first time, I made them to man I knew, and respected, and already cared about deeply. I did not sign a contact, and accepted no mahr. My veil was perhaps the most familiar thing—it reminded me of my old hajib. But none of that mattered. I could tell that everything from the church to the music to the flowers I held meant the world to Erik, and Erik was fast becoming the world to me. He slipped the old ruby ring onto my left hand, and I knew I was his, and he was mine. The words did not matter.

Our wedding day was leisurely, spent picnicking in our best clothes. It was still warm, and dry for the day at least. The olives were just purpling, and there were pomegranates just turning to their darker red—an unexpected touch of past days that we could now allow to be pleasanter memories. He bought me a lute, and helped me play love songs on it. We walked back to our rented villa, arm in arm as the sunset brought on a chill. He left me alone for a long time once we were there, and I was forcibly reminded of when he asked, would it be a real marriage?

I left my door open and I put away my bridal clothes. I considered that I might need to go to him, but decided to wait a little while longer.

Eventually, he came in. (If I had left it up to my courage, I would have stayed away, he later said. So instead, I depended on your kindness.) He stole in so quietly that I did not realize he had entered the room until he was standing behind me. I was sitting at the vanity, brushing out my hair. I didn't turn, but found his gaze in the mirror and held it. Painfully slowly, and with trembling hands, he lifted off his mask and set it next to my forgotten hairbrush.

He smiled at me in the mirror, ever so slightly, and I could not help but smile back.

We knew from the start that we would go to Lillebonne. Rouen had served its purpose, but we found that Normandy was as good a place as any to start in on our new lives. It had been easy for Erik to convince the young owner of that old house that it would take too much money to renovate for a profitable sale. He had offered a very fair price for the estate as it stood, and was accepted with alacrity. Its restoration would be his last great construction project.

Nadir declined to follow us, though he would visit. He was content in his same little apartment, with Darius and his wife a few doors down. I think he really did end up as a sort of father to us: satisfied to see the next generation settled at last. He enjoyed chatting with the police commissioner over coffee, and sending the occasional student of opera history on wild goose chases concerning the Garnier's old ghost.

You, my dear Shadi, were a surprise, but perhaps the best and happiest surprise there could have been. It had never occurred to me—or Erik—that a child might follow a marriage, though that is the usual way of things. A woman does not expect her firstborn to come along with her third husband. But, here you are.

Your father named you: Happiness. I think the moment he laid eyes on you, you chased away every last shadow and fear in his heart. I would have never imagined he would give you a Persian name, but you took away the sting of, well, everything and left only sunshine. (Your other name, that sensible French thing you never use, was my idea.) He counted your fingers and toes, as fathers must have done since time immemorial. He counted your nose, too, which may not be quite so common. I am still of the opinion that you inherited the nose he was supposed to have, rather more aristocratic-looking than my own.

And he sang. I wonder if that is where some of your perfectionist frustration with music comes from? As talented as you are, I think you must live with that echo of perfect music somewhere in your soul. I can never forget it, though I heard it but once, and have no hope of ever recapturing it in this life.

For those next few years, our lives were filled with so much joy. We had been content together, two friends who had found their peace in an unexpected place. Peace and contentment make fine soil for love to grow in. But you were the rain and sun that made it blossom. That is what your early life was made of: peace, and contentment, and love—and happiness. Perhaps that is also why you are still so quick to smile, to laugh and sing, even in the face of hardship. (I think that also came from your father's blood: another thing he was supposed to have but that life stole from him.)

Perhaps now that you have read more of where Erik and I came from, you will realize what a gift that is. Life is a gift to start with—but joy? A priceless one. Hard to find, harder to hold on to. But we clung fiercely to the joy we found, and to you. You are a gift.

We haven't always quite seen eye to eye on every choice you have made in life. It is difficult, for a farmer's daughter just clever enough to survive, to keep up with the brilliance that came so easily to you and your father. Another confession: that is why I spent so much time reading with you when you were young. We were both getting our education. You, of course, surpassed me in quick order.

I wasn't quite sure how things were going to work out when you chose to leave the Sorbonne for your young man. I thought a husband was a funny thing to pour all your talents into, even though that's more or less what I had done my entire life. I thought you might like to do something… more. But you did do something 'more.' I should have trusted the inheritance of your father's mind. Genius is not merely a matter of sums and languages and art and dreams wrought into reality. I should have known you were clever enough to know where your happiness would lie. Your father, too, craved nothing more than the comforts of home and family and his virtuoso soul best flourished there. You know the music he wrote while we were all together. Genius may be too small a word. So I am glad you have your (no longer quite so) young man, and that he has you, and that you are both free to shine as brightly as you please with one another. Erik would have liked that.

I am sorry your father died when you were still so young. I would have liked him to have lived to see you lengthen your skirts and pin up your hair. He would have taken as much pride in your doe-eyed beauty as he did your clever mind and (his words from memory) already quite excellent taste in music. He also would have been of much more help to you than I was when you decided you wanted to do your own translation of Galileo. Even more so, I would have loved to see him give you away at your wedding. Did he ever play any of his wedding masses for you? His were the only Kyries that could move me.

But it was not within our power to make those things happen. He would joke in those last few weeks that his brilliance had always been too great to be contained in mortal form. Privately, I think we both knew that his body had never quite been right for this world, and that he had never had a chance to take care of it as he should have. He tried to keep that from you as best he could. I never knew if that was the right thing to do or not. But that was Erik: he really could use that voice of his to convince you of just about anything. And if what he wanted to convince you (and me, and probably himself) of was that our happiness was not at an end, I certainly was not going to stop him. We had lived on borrowed time long enough to know how to make the most of it.

Time, too, is a gift. Perhaps it is the most precious commodity of all. With enough time, miserable children can become happy men. Strife can give way to peace. Barren soil can be tilled and tended to until love can grow in it. We had enough time, though, God in heaven knows, we wanted more. We always want more, and the trick is to be content with what we have.

Thank you for your generous offer, but I will not be following you and your family to America. This is however one life choice of yours I see a great deal of wisdom in. 1915 is not turning out to be any kinder than its predecessor.

Do not worry for me. I have, you see, survived a great deal. Not quite so much as your father, but few can claim to have done so. I am glad for having had the adventure, for it led me here. I am settled, truly, in my life. I am putting the punctuation on my story. You are the next chapter, and how wonderful a chapter it will be.

With all my love,

Your mother,

Mojgan

Ah, seek the treasure of a mind at rest
And store it in the treasury of Ease;
Not worth a loyal heart, a tranquil breast,
Were all the riches of thy lands and seas!

-Hafez, Not All the Sum of Earthly Happiness

And that is that. Thank you so much for sticking with the story: especially those of you who were around in 2014. Sorry it took so long to finish! And now I return to the black hole from whence I came.