I couldn't believe my carelessness. How could I have left my journal there? Of all things, why my journal?

My sneakers slapped the pavement in an insatiable rhythm, but not one fast enough to match the frantic beating of my heart. What if someone found it, what if someone read it? My heart felt likely to stop, even as it raced more blood to my system. Oh, God, that I'd never written it! It was too silly to be looked on by anyone but me. I didn't want Mrs. Miller to find it.

Thursday afternoons were exclusively my time. After school I would walk about two miles to the little Dunkin' Donuts that rested in a hollow off of Main Street, and for an hour or so I would read or write in one of the booths, sipping hot chocolate or coffee. Then, when it approached 4 in the afternoon, I would walk to the library, browsing for something new to read and dropping off my finished books. I adored my town's library, as it was one of the few things that made life in this cramped little town bearable to me. My father and I had only moved here six years ago, and the first eleven years of my life, spent in New York City, made memories of nights at Broadway musicals, watching from backstage, or trips to Chinatown or Little Italy practically unbearable to think about. Life was so tiny here, and there was no other way to think of it.

This afternoon was nothing like the other ones I had spent. I'd left my journal in the library, and I didn't discover that fact until I'd wanted to continue my thoughts last night. A whole week had gone by, and what made me even more apprehensive was the fact that Mrs. Miller hadn't called me about it. She usually made it her exclusive business to inform me when I'd forgotten something yet again.

My dance bag thumped against my side, and I felt a cramp developing somewhere along my left calf. I gritted my teeth and pushed myself harder. It was my just punishment, I thought, for being so careless. Though carelessness and forgetfulness had been bred into me, my father enjoyed saying. He had once left his Stradivarius on the seat of a taxicab while on the way to rehearsal. We liked calling him 'YoYo Ma', just for kicks after that.

We. We being my mother and I. Now it was just me who said that, and I hadn't done so for over five years. The last time I did, I had made my father cry. It had been such a natural joke that it had just slipped out. What I forgot was that it had been natural for my mother too. I had cried that night over the fact that I had forgotten.

Finally, after two punishing miles uphill, Main Street leveled out into a broad, flat expanse. I darted across the street to where the sidewalk was flatter, where the cobblestones had just been replaced, and started the downhill slide to the library. I could see the old building, with its corny rooster weather vane, peering out from above the trees. Leaping over a root, I ran out into the library's parking lot…

…and was promptly almost hit by a car.

The black BMW screeched to a halt, and stupidly, I put my hands out and touched the hood. Though the car had been traveling very slowly, I still felt the punishing impact of metal on my palms. The pain was secondary to my humiliation. I must have given the poor driver a heart attack.

I knelt to gather my bag, knocked off my shoulder, and I heard the door of the car open and close. A man's strong arm helped me up, and took both of my hands, where bruises were already developing.

"I am so sorry, I just wasn't thinking," I babbled, trying to extract my hands out of the man's firm grip. I felt the soft feeling of his strangely calloused hands on my own and for the first time looked up at his face.

The smooth white leather of the mask curved over the upper portion of his face like a turtle's shell. His green eyes, flecked with bits of amber, looked down at me with a glance that I could not interpret. It seemed concerned, yet somehow trying to hide the extent of that concern. There were also flashes of something else, something that troubled me unconsciously. I pulled my hands out of his, probably a little bit more swiftly than I had intended to.

"Thank you." It seemed odd, those words. I should have been begging his forgiveness, but something about his eyes just made me want to stand in his gaze and be silent. The mask tipped me off right away. He was the kind man who had let me take his book from him. I'd be thankful to him forever after that—it had been a great help in my study of opera.

His hands dropped back down to his sides, with only the slightest hesitation. A smile tried to form on his lips, but unsuccessfully.

"You have nothing to apologize about. It is I who should be sorry,"

Again, that slight hint of French and something else hovered around his words. If I closed my eyes and listened to him speak, I could almost picture the fairy-land that he must have come from. I could almost smell Persian spices.

The pause between the first part of his sentence and the last was a trifle too long.

"For almost running you over, that is."

I shook my head, unable to take my eyes away from his. My smile was a little more realistic. "I was careless. I left something here a week ago, and it means a lot to me. I was in too much of a hurry to find it," I held up my palms, "and this is my reward. Haste makes waste." I quipped, the odd words somehow finding their ways to my lips. I realized too late how strange they sounded, and tried to pass them off with a giggle.

He stepped back, almost as if to retreat to his car, when he stopped suddenly and looked directly into my eyes. Ordinarily, I disliked making eye contact with total strangers, but there was something about him that I implicitly trusted, even if there was something unsettling in his manner. The hash of emotions I got around him wreaked havoc on my impressions and what exactly I was supposed to do.

He smiled. "Do you like opera?"

I was shocked. "How did you know I was studying it?"

He counted off on his fingers, drawing my attention to those pale digits, which seemed so elegant that I was almost entirely entranced by their smoothness of motion, if nothing else. "First, you had a recording of Tosca. Second, you checked out a mammoth volume of opera libretti. Then, you proceed to check out each and every copy of opera recording that this library has."

I was slightly unnerved. "You look at the library records?"

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, almost as if mocking me for my suspicion. His lips curled, and my attention was captivated by that other, exquisitely elegant portion of him. "I am an opera cognoscente, you might say. But Americans, in general, are not. I am attentive to anyone who is. In fact," he continued, almost seeming to weigh his decision before he acted, "I have something that might interest you."

The book which he drew from his jacket pocket was old, I saw right away. It was heavily bound, solid, a testament to the ages. When he placed it in my hands, I felt the weight and felt that familiar thrill that went through me whenever I touched something that I felt had a mystery. Old books, old costumes, and old instruments.

Under his eyes, I opened the book. The title page, with ink so old that the effect was almost one of embossing, read The Age of Opera and the Beauties of the Stage. I smiled, flipping the pages reverently, examining the wonderful line sketches and diagrams that seemed to outline every aspect of an operatic life. I shook my head, jealousy and longing rising up in me, and handed it back to him.

"It's beautiful." I said helplessly, my eyes flicking inexorably up to his.

Green points of light bored into me. "I meant for you to keep it."

My head shook out of the instinct of politeness. One did not accept expensive presents from either close friends or total strangers. "I couldn't." My protest was heartfelt, though that same heart screamed at me to keep it. "It's a magnificent book. I'm sure you would miss it."

"It has been well loved." He admitted, but his eyes did not waver in their intensity. "But I feel that you would love it just as well. Besides, a hundred twenty-five years ago, that was the definitive text for an opera lover. And little changes, even over a century."

His face was gently abstracted as he mused silently on this subject, and I felt a strange beckoning from his soul to mine. The volume hung heavily in my hand. For the first time since he had gotten out of the car, I felt the oddity of our situation there. His car, pulled haphazardly in the way and the two of us standing there having a discussion of literature! There was no one else in the lot, no witnesses to this, but I felt the pull of the world, and something, an impulse, rose up in me.

I smiled vaguely and made a tiny noise in my throat.

"Thank you." I brought the book up to my chest, and he stared down at me again. He must have been several inches over six feet. "I'll treasure it."

"That's all I ask of you." He said.

We parted with strange, sad smiles, and I watched his car round the corner and speed out onto Main Street. My head spun slowly, and I sat down for a moment on the curb. My legs and head hurt, and my palms, which I had insisted were fine, now started to twinge with pain.

I placed the book carefully in my bag, and leaned my head into my hands. After a few moments, I got up and searched the library for my journal. I never found it.

I had never before been so happy to leave dance class. My run in the early afternoon followed by an hour and a half session at the bar left my legs feeling as if they had been filled with napalm jelly. Each muscle was weak and burning. I collapsed on the splintering wooden benches before the town hall to wait for a few minutes before I walked home. I had not performed well that day. The pain in my legs, the agony in my mind about my lost journal (even Mrs. Miller hadn't seen it) and the confusion about my run-in with my benefactor that day made it impossible for me to concentrate.

Though I should have been furious with myself over the lost journal, I found myself thinking about that man. The strange feeling of kinship that I had felt with him at the time rankled the back of my mind, and I found myself examining what I knew of the man to give me that impression.

My first estimation of him was nothing short of flattering. He was intelligent, elegant, and kind, if there was a hint of sarcasm that hung rather heavy about his mouth. But since I had my own supply of sarcasm, I wasn't deprecating of its worth. An air of solemn loneliness swirled around him as he walked, an air that probably discouraged most people from speaking with him. It was plain that he did not belong in this town.

His age I had guessed to be mid to late thirties. This was substantial enough to make me blush at the thoughts I considered when I looked at his hands, his lips or his fine, tall physique. I was seventeen, a high school senior. I'd not even lived. He, he seemed…ageless. There was a sobriety around his eyes, a sadness, that breathed lifetimes lived, ages spent in a sad, tragic world.

The mask. The mask must be the root of it all. When I had first seen him in the darkness of the music section, ensconced in his armchair like an emperor on the throne, I had automatically assumed that he had been a burn victim. I had shared an elementary school class with a kid who had lost his mother and one side of his face to his burning house, and I had pitied the kid for the constant teasing he got from the kids. He had clung to his mask with the fervor of a drowning person. In a way, he had been drowning.

Of course, that judgment on my part was probably naïve. I hoisted myself off the bench, feeling my legs wobble, and started the long walk home. Even though the days were lengthening as spring advanced, I did not want to walk home in the dark. Besides, if I arrived home after my father, he would worry himself sick (sicker) by the time I got home. I also thought better while I was moving.

He could have had a disfiguring birth defect. Such things, unfortunately, did happen, and though in America he might have been held aloft and been the subject for many charity drives, maybe they did things differently in Europe. Perhaps he had been too proud to beg, preferring to don a mask for all time rather than ask for the pity of others. That was admirable. Having pride of my own, I knew what it was to have to live off the charity and humiliating pity of others.

There was, of course, no way to tell, and with characteristic American feeling, I let him wear what he wished to wear and for whatever reason. I was curious, certainly, but there was no reason for me to pry. Even thinking of horrible explanations seemed to me to smack of vulgarity.

I felt the heavy weight of the book against my thigh and smiled, washed over by a wave of gratefulness. Whatever had prompted him to give me such a gift? We had no acquaintance, other than a rather embarrassing—to me—exchange in a public library. Oh, and I had almost been hit by his car. There was that. But if I had almost hit a stupid teenager, I would rather have rolled him over than given him such a precious book. I only had to be grateful that he had decided on the latter than otherwise.

I had covered a good mile before I stopped. The breeze of the evening was so soothing that I rested against a tree trunk by the side of the road and lifted my heavy mane of hair off my neck, letting the wind cool the sweat and calm me down. The evening's first stars were coming out, and I stared at them winking at me through the thick branches of the pine against which I leaned. Cars passing on that road were few and far between, and for the most part I was alone. I valued that feeling, even as I feared it. Living in New York had given me the sense of never being alone, which was sometimes good and oftentimes bad. I shivered and started walking again, faster this time. I had the feeling that someone was following me.

My home was small, tucked away in a small corner of this tiny town, and until one was right on top of it, it was hard to know that it was even there. The driveway was not paved, which made driving along it something between off-roading and mountain climbing. I remember what my mother had said when she first saw it. In the pain of her throat cancer, she had murmured to me that it was like the cottage that had sheltered Snow White from the Evil Queen. And as I look at it with new eyes, I can see what she meant. Trees stand like sentinels, reinforced with mammoth boulders, and overshadowing all, the stars are an advanced guard.

My father's car was parked in the driveway, and I checked my watch, fearful of what I would find. But unfortunately, he was early again. I sighed. The time was coming when I would not have him either. I feared that with the fear of an adult, and also with the hysteria of a child. I did not want to be alone. I wanted there to be someone I could come back to. But I was being selfish. Of course he loved her too and wanted to be with her. I was strong. I could and would take care of myself if he asked me to. Either way, I had no choice.

I felt the unwillingness strongly this time. Don't ask me to go in, I begged, though whom I did not know. Don't make me look at his eyes, the eyes that have no hope. I want to have hope, I want to live!

My feet dragged me on. He might need help with dinner, and I was late as it was.

I peered around the corner of the door, so that I would know what kind of mood he was in. Unlike his bad days, right now he was puttering happily about the kitchen, murmuring under his breath, as he stirred the pot of pasta and sautéed onions and tomatoes together with olive oil in the frying pan. I smiled, smelling the familiar aroma.

My father, Charles Day, was originally from one of the Scandinavian nations. Though since he had been moved away from his original home when he was very young, he was never quite sure which country he had come from. His parents had died young, and he went to live with a relation in Paris. This relative, a kind aunt, had spotted his talent for music early, and had taken him on so many pilgrimages to La Scala and the other stages of Italy that when he had finally become a fully-fledged musician, he had made his home equally in both nations. His accent, a charming amalgamation between the two languages, often confuses those whom he meets. We often have a good time laughing at their puzzled expressions.

He looked over his shoulder at me, as I hung around the corner of the door, and shook his wooden spoon at me. Tomato sauce dripped onto the floor, and we both laughed.

"Christine," he cried, mopping at the spill with his foot, "come inside. You'll catch a chill. My goodness, you must have worked hard!"

I knew that my hair was standing on edge like wires, and I could still feel my flushed face. Embarrassed, I shifted my bag off my shoulder and ran my hand through my hair. "We needed the work," I said, by way of explanation, and collapsed into one of the kitchen stools.

He clucked, pouring me a glass of milk, and, placing it in front of me, threatened me with the wooden spoon again. "Prima ballerinas are perfection itself."

"I'm not a ballerina," I said, smarting slightly under his rebuke. "I'm better. I'm an American ballerina."

"You use the term lightly. 'Ballerina' is a word for those who are classically trained." He sighed, stirring the sauce onto the drained spaghetti. "You are a modern dancer, though thankfully not as modern as some of these young ladies I see on this MTV."

"Papa," I cried, laughing, "you don't watch MTV."

"Well," he smiled, "I hear of it." His laughter was heavier, grittier than mine. My heart clenched, and my hands trembled as they held the glass.

His hands were uneven as they carried the plates over to the table, and I grasped mine quickly before it spilled everywhere. We had spent the beginnings of too many meals just cleaning up messes. And tonight, though he was in good spirits, it was obvious that he was tired. I cursed myself for having been late getting home. I might have started dinner.

I sighed, and twirled some pasta around my fork. It was al dente perfection, nothing less than my father, in any state of health, would have permitted to reach the table. Some things would never change. I chewed and swallowed. Not until the very end.

"So how was your day?"

"Rehearsal was long and difficult today." He chewed thoughtfully and gestured to his leather violin case on the end of the counter. "Those fools sometimes have no respect for what they play. The history of the violin is something great, but they treat it as if it had been invented yesterday."

I nodded, sympathetic. "But you did well?"

He looked at me sharply. "As always, Christine. Is there a reason why I should not be as I always am?"

"Papa," I stared down at my plate, "you didn't take your pills with you this morning."

Ominous silence.

"You haven't been taking them for two weeks. I know there are more pills in the bottle than there should be. Are you feeling that much better?" There was both reproach and hope in my voice.

"Medicine can do no more for me than it already has, Christine." His voice was quiet, but without the sadness that so often haunted mine. "Weak hearts are bred into my family. I am only glad that I did not pass it to you. Your mother…" He stopped, hand pressed to his heart. My eyes clouded over, and I had to open my mouth to breathe. His voice was no more than a whisper when it resumed. "Your mother saw to that."

"Papa," I whispered, two tears rolling from my eyes, "I don't want you to go."

"Christine," his hand covered mine, "sometimes, what will be, will be, despite all we may wish to the contrary."

I put my fork down. My tears had mixed with the sweet sauce and had left the pasta bitter. Besides, my throat was so swollen with unshed tears that another bite would choke me.

Do you really wish to stay, Papa? If you wished, maybe you'd take your medicine!

That was what I longed to say. But because I already knew the unspoken answer, I would not hurt both him and myself by speaking it aloud. He was right. What would be, would be. The only thing that mattered was the time that he decided to spend with me now. I would not ruin it.

I stabbed a plump tomato through with my fork and popped it into my mouth. I had eaten this recipe so often that one might have assumed that I'd be able to make it by now. But I could never imitate my father's perfect blend of spices. I savored the taste, knowing that I might never eat it again.

Even though we did not speak through the rest of the dinner, I think he understood what I wanted from him. At the end of the meal, as I brought the dishes over to the sink to be washed, I saw him take his pill.

Please, Papa, please…just a little bit longer. I'm not strong enough yet. Wait for me, Papa.