HI EVERYONE: I DONT KNOW WHY, BUT IN MY DOC MANAGER IT SHOWS CHAPTER 5, FALLING IN A CANAL, but on the FANFICTION published page, it repeated my first chapter. ANY CLUE WHY?

Anyway... here is another submission, I thought I would try to continue at Chapter 6, but you might be confused since Chapter 5 is missing. SORRY: THIS CHAPTER IS BELLA's SISTER, ANNA (home in Marica preparing to goto Venice to rescue Bella)

CHAPTER SIX/TO THE RESCUE

As much as she hated to admit it, the walk would do her good. In spite of a blistered right instep, which incessantly rubbed against her shoe, Anna moved along the path and noticed that the Colorado winter had come in very much like a lion. Snow filled yards as well as every available parking space with piles everywhere lining the lonely lanes. Spectacular twinkling flakes fell about and around her as well. She couldn't help but smile and enjoy the aspens, barren of leaves but with their black silhouette showed through coats of ice on each branch. The white backdrop, reflected thousands white lights from Christmas decor not yet put away until next year.

Ah fresh air, she thought, if only it would inspire fresh ideas.

Not even this striking, majestic black and white scene, a lovely breeze and those canopies of white trees could bring inspiration to her now. What would her next move be? How could she solve this problem? What would it take? How would she solve it? This problem, that problem?

And the next, after that? she thought, damn them, why don't they leave me alone?

She wasn't sure who "they" or "them" was right now, but she felt crowded even when alone and decided to blame it on the people around her who always seem to clamor for more of her support. Until she was tapped out and the well ran dry.

Why do they all have to have so many problems? And why do I have to solve them?

There was no real answer to the question, she resigned herself. She just did. it was her job. Her role. Which seemed like a job not only didn't pay but cost her plenty in serenity, peace and tranquility.

Stop bemoaning your fate and focus, she scolded herself. Focus on the mystery, solve.

What little information Bella had given her about the ghosts and the dead glass makers kept her up for several nights. Not to mention that Edward had turned up again in Bella's life, a fact that disturbed Anna more than any hauntings or potential murders. Edward, an outright scoundrel, no question about it, would stop at nothing to get Bella ensnared in more of his drama. Anna's concern was not that Bella couldn't handle Edward. Her concern was that Bella would try. Bella's left-behind American sweetheart had practically handed her over to the wolf.

Bella, who left America in extreme haste after her so-called fiance, David, had failed to provide an engagement ring at any of the appropriate times-including, but not limited to Louis's August birthday, their Caribbean fall cruise together, Christmas and New Year-had little restraint when it came to Edward's charm. Bella had decided she wasn't waiting until Valentine's Day to be disappointed one more time by David, took an opportunity her law career offered, bought herself a diamond, told David when she returned they would marry or else, then she left for Venice. Some way to plan a wedding. Some would say crazy. Bella would say play today and plan tomorrow.

Whatever insecurity Anna initially felt regarding Edward and his potential misdeeds, once she decided to turn her life upside down and will herself to Venice, she was filled with confidence, energy and self-assuredness. She researched flights, hotels and apartments. She organized clothes, jewelry, shoes. Called cat sitters to assess availability, skipped during walks and smiled grandly during runs. She sneered at processed food at the grocery stores in anticipation of fresh produce at venetian markets. She tried on scarves, vests, jackets, surveying each to determine which were the most italian-looking and flattering combinations. She lined up toiletries, socks, lingerie and make-up, but not too much because she proudly would buy better stuff in Venice.

It had been easier than she thought it would be, getting time off to go to Venice, to hunt down, trap and hopefully bring home her wayward sister, Bella. She learned the hard way that life was often easier in reality than in her head. Honesty helps. Honesty, often a misunderstood concept, does not mean fudging a little, leaving out important details, or using brutal tactless frankness. Like life itself, being honest was often easier in practice than it seemed in her mind, especially when afraid to ask for what she wanted, if she knew what she wanted.

While driving to work to talk to her boss, she reviewed her reasons why she should be allowed to take all of her vacation time starting next week. She hadn't had a vacation in over a year, she could work remotely from Venice, there were no crushing deadlines looming and it was only three weeks. Most importantly of all, her sister had gone off again on one of her journeys, this one involving venetian ghosts, a long lost bad boy and live-in partner back home who might not wait forever.

Winding her mind tighter than the switchback curves she negotiated on the way, she almost ran right into a dog walker. That woke her up from the trance of lies she created for the task and she took a long deep breath, turned her IPOD to classical music station and tried her best to get quiet.

She looked about her, branches thrusting up to roof edges, curling, leaning along a hedge. Sparkling sun flickered. Across the pale expanse, she witnessed students filing to school seemingly full of wisdom with piles of books. Ambitions violently danced around her and inside her. Then she heard the poetic words come to her, which lately had become more and more frequent:

Calm in the evening, quick in the morn, snow fell and the day ended, curtains dropped, lovers come and go, within the master's framework, despite the silken snow. Neglected at the onset, savored when its gone. The knowledge grows thick and taut.

She recited the next line as the words landed on her mouth from somewhere outside of her:

"It only shows on paper thin rows inside the frost flaked doors unknown to foreign shores."

Where the hell is this stuff coming from? she asked herself in her car on a lonely stretch of road between her apartment and work. She traveled that road many times with her friend, Bill, who died suddenly, either accidentally or by his own hand, several years earlier. She always heard the poems as she drove this stretch as if Bill were composing them for her.

"Unknown to foreign shores." she repeated the words that often came to her, perhaps from him, from beyond the grave. "Interesting. I should be writing these down."

"Yes you should" she heard a voice clearly say to her. Not in her head, but from the air around her.

'What?" she asked.

"Yes you should write them down. You will need them later. In Venice."

Out of thin air again, more poetry flooded into her mind:

Wild adventuress. Open-eyed and well-timed escape. Leave the bores and live the lore. To winter's outdoor delight, venture forth to those foreign shores.

She checked to see if someone was beside her on the path but saw nothing. Whoever and whatever strange presence it was, today she felt more than one "thing" with her. She felt crowded. She felt surrounded.

"Don't worry" she heard a group chant "we are here to protect you."

"Bill? Is that you? With friends?" she asked rhetorically and laughed at the crazy ways of her mind. In her excitement to plan the trip, and her worries about Bella, she had gotten little sleep for nights. She must be hearing things. Good-bye winterless winter, she thought, because usually she would use her vacation this time of year for a trip to Florida, where it would be warm and sunny. She was going to Venice, where it was sure to be cold and foggy.

When she'd arrived at work yesterday, she'd snuck into her office to regroup for the planned discussion with her boss but her boss was waiting in her office. For a second this disturbed her, but then she heard the voices from the car and they chanted to her:

The clouds are passing, the leaves turning, the passing stage, the turning world. May the thoughts fill you with the words to say, then shall you say them.

It was like a prayer. I prayer she forgot to say this morning after meditation. She had forgotten to ask her higher power, which she called God, to give her the right, to lead her to her destiny this morning. It seemed she was being led, even when she failed to ask for help. She took a short second, silently prayed to be given the right words to say, took a deep breath and she said them to her boss. Anna simply told the truth.

Honesty being the best option, this time it worked. Not only did her supervising attorney granted her the entire three weeks vacation she'd accumulated. To go to Venice and rescue her sister. What?

"Sometimes you just have to go for it!" her boss had added. Anna, ever suspicious of lawyers, considered for a a second she might be getting fired. She shook her head in disbelief. The whole discussion had been so much worse in her head than in reality. All she had to do was ask for the right words, not mull it over and over, rephrase it several more times and practice it incessantly. She knew she was valued, valuble and had never asked for more than one week of vacation before in the ten years she'd been working there since she'd clerked there in school. But still, what was up at the firm that her boss would let her go without so much blink.

Anna would leave for Venice in less than one week.

Her mother was different. She'd learned a long time ago that her mom could be much worse in reality than in her minds. To Anna, her beautiful, intelligent but bitter mother represented the stuck woman who wanted to ignore what she saw reflected back in her empty mirror. Persuading an employer she needed to leave for Venice immediately went too well and Anna mistakenly surfed right over to her mom and crashed on the shore as Mother informed Anna that she knew nothing of her sister Bella's trip to Venice and would give no permission to her normal daughter fleeing the states in pursuit of the reckless one.

Anna didn't understand how her sister could keep secrets so well nor why Bella didn't keep her informed of such secrets so she didn't blow them. Now the secret had blown up in her face.

Her mother, never the diplomat, said "I sure as hell don't want my other daughter to traipse off to hang around stinky canals."

Santa Lucia, Anna prayed, helped me with your namesake. Lucia, Anna's second generation Italian mother was maternal, concerned, loving. But as any good Italian mother, she was plenty-armed with appropriate tools to control her girls. And so it started-what's going happen with the cats, what about your job, where will you get the money, guilt-trippy gulit-trippy stuff. Both her daughters must be going crazy, what would she say to people?

Anna desperately needed and wanted her mom's advice. She really wanted her support. She also wanted to get away and, in the conflict, realized that maybe mom didn't follow her truth. Her mother had well-grounded fears, fears that had often held her back from her own truth. As Anna listened to her mother rant about transportation issues, like plane crashes and train strikes, the worst sorts, Anna knew that one daughter, Bella, went to where she wanted to go, and the other, Anna couldn't ever go where she wanted to go. This was the precedent her mother was counting upon to control at least one of her now grown children.

Its not like her mom really had any say in the matter. Her words fell on Anna's ears, but they didn't enter them. They would circumvent, like the public boats in Venice that never went down the little canals, but most of the day and night cruised on the major ones. Anna agreed that her going to Venice, with Bella already there for months, was a major event. It certainly warranted her mother's concern. It was just not one of those major events in life where you mull it over with mom, sit at the edge of her bed in tears wondering why she always seemed much wiser about the things swirling around in her child's head. Like on the other smaller but still important enough to warrant a public boat canals-the Guidecca and Cannareggio canals-where the city was obliged to have service, but the whole city wouldn't come to a standstill if they were not in operation, her mother's concerns were important, but life would go on and Anna would goto Venice.

Nonetheless her mother's criticisms and guilt button pushing hit her hard and she hadn't been on guard for it like she had been with her boss. She should have been. Instead she sat there feeling like she was suddenly the gum on the bottom of her mother's shoes that mom was now scrapping her foot to the pavement real hard to get off. Yucky sticky gum was Anna to her mother now.

Their mother, though loving, generous and kind in many ways as well as incredibly creative and funny, could also be cunningly manipulative, vengeful and bitter when any of those moods suited her, which she used to advantage like a skilled parent with a vested right to do so, even if you weren't a child. This, this manipulative quality, her mother would deny, deny, deny like a man on trial for a capital crime. Perhaps that's why Bella and Anna were often attracted to manipulative men? Anna recalled her own mistakes with men like Edward. Edward again.

Focus on solving the mystery, she was beginning to use it as a chant and hadn't even many clues. The ones she had were scattered and vague. She needed to get to Venice to see, touch and feel what was going on there. Now she was blocked. Anna did what she always did when she was having a mental block. She relaxed her mind, let her feelings and instincts take over, her emotions flow. She sort of gave herself up to her higher power with an internal "pep talk."

Something didn't click. Something was off-kilter. Something hidden. Something ... not of this world or time.

"Bring me to the thought," she whispered to someone or something.

She thought of Boston, where she went to college. Of the Adames. John, James, Abigail. A line of bluebloods. A respected, wealthy, brilliant, political, historical family.

Did they reincarnate many years ago? Where are they now? How were they relevant to the situation at hand?

Who knows? Something brought it to mind when I asked for help, Anna recalled as if that mattered to her reflections of reincarnation and spirits. She remembered many strange phenomenon from her days in Boston, another old town like Venice loaded with lore and legend and plenty of historical conflict that could create energy fields. From way back in time, someone in history may have recorded something. What could be documented, discovered traced and eventually it might all lead back to the present situation in Venice? Surely it was possible, a path documented in history leading to answers directly affecting the present, influencing one's daily fate. Who would leave such traces? How would they survive?

As far fetched as it seemed, she sighed, Its all I've got. Why not do a little research into reincarnation evidence. Anna felt better already, fantasy having cheered her up. Regardless of whether would help her sister's situation in Venice or not, her voyage into the lives of the Adams family would at the very least distract her, not to mention teach her a bit of American history. She might have to fast forward to the source. To Boston. Go to Boston? Another great excuse for a trip. She laughed as she was now briskly jogging back home and thinking more like Bella. Back to the task at hand for the moment. Her mother.

Not only did Anna have her mother to deal with but her mother's telegram to family. By the day's end everyone would know about her two ridiculously irresponsible daughters slacking off in Venice. Anna also knew she would have the wrath of Bella to contend with for telling her mother Bella was there. Fortunately Anna knew better than to tell her mother the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Omission of the facts is a lie too she knew, but couldn't help it when it came to her mom.

"I need a break from work and Bella has an apartment in Venice where I can chill." is all she had said. It was enough. The damage was done. The more Anna protested and pleaded for discretion, her bully of a mother and would do just as she pleased while at the same time exhibiting indignation at her suggestion that she would do such a thing as tell everyone ("deny deny deny again, a master" Anna thought).

Anna hung up the phone and wanted a drink. Alcoholic.

Not going for a drink, she picked up the phone and called a sober friend and wondered how many years it would take being sober before mom could no longer make her want to run for a drink during a three minute phone call. She stopped at the nearest coffee shop for a strong cup of coffee.

"Curse my mother if she thinks she can intimidate and stop me from doing what I want with my life. Curse me for telling her anything, EVER." she thought while shugging a double cappuccino, consciously violating the italian "no cappuccino after noon" rule. Violating any rule, including an Italian one, was in order.

Walking into the coffee shop immediately relaxed her, not because of the relaxing environment there, but because her thoughts drifted to a favorite venetian coffee house. She grinned as she pictured herself sitting at that cafe in Venice. She would be there soon. Something inside her hinted that her addiction to Venice was at least as strong as her Bella's but she squashed it quickly and ordered another, a double espresso. But the thought of her addiction to Venice ca her back, rising from the pit of her stomach flutters when she thought about that coffee house. Coffee houses in America, although some large popular chains have done much to improve them, just didn't feel the same as a parisien or venetian one, or any cafe anywhere in france or italy for that matter.

Then-in the midst of a fabulous daydream in which she was sitting outside in the sun at a cafe with a handsome man asking her all about herself, wearing his beautiful italian outfit and with his sexy italian accent-her phone rang. Her uncle. She suspected her mother hadn't wasted any time getting the telegram out to the masses, or at least the conservative, critical mass that would support her position. As close as he and she were, his being like a father to her had it drawbacks, like now. Fortunately she no longer owed him money, the great jail, the "owing" of money and thus your life to an older family member.

"Hi uncle Rich, what's up?" she said as if she didn't know. Her uncle became her surrogate father after her father left her mother abruptly after 22 years of marriage.

"You're going back to Venice (pregnant pause) AGAIN?" he said. Never one to mince judgmental words, getting to the point quickly and bluntly. It was her uncle's best weapon.

She was prepared by years of therapy, recovery inventories and Bella's training.

So "yes" was all she said. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will (forget can, it just WILL) be used against you.

"Well have a nice time. Must be nice." Guilt, his next weapon.

"Oh I will," she said, nothing more. Just admit admit admit, don't explain explain explain, as had been suggested to her over and over by sober friends.

"Your sister? What the hell is she doing there for god sake?" Fear, another weapon. A powerful one that usually left Anna defenseless. He knew well that her mother hadn't know about Bella's trip and Anna had inadvertently spilled the proverbial beans. Those beans lay scattered across the porcelain tile Match, game, set. He set up the chess pieces slowly for an ambush. Once he had her sniveling, trembling, anxious and grieved, surrounded, her mother would move back in for the kill. Checkmate.

She thought for a moment. Paused. What is he doing? He's attempted to put fear in me with that double-edged knife of a phrase meaning "you aren't the crazy one so get some sense in you now and/or if you don't we will get on her case about this secret you told us and then you won't want to be there with her anyway."

That one, the fear weapon, was a good one. She he would try to do a full court press on it.

"Bella's fine." she said. A little too much? A little trying too hard to sound like everything was ok with Bella. She wanted to say that in some families being asked to taking a law class in Italy was prestigious, an achievement, an exciting opportunity. To her midwestern planted, rooted, stacked into the fertile agricultural surrounding soil family, it signified pure reckless abandon.

"Oh that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I'm sure she is probably making a complete fool of herself with all of those younger students there, drinking her way through half the wine in the veneto."

Bella was indeed probably doing just that, this much Anna couldn't deny. So she didn't.

"Well its her life" she told him. She couldn't believe she said it. The strange thing is that she meant it. She knew "fine" stood for "freaked out, emotional, neurotic and insecure" but something was turning inside of her and wanted to get out. She wanted to get out. She had to get out. It must have been some spirit, not her, who spoke those words to her uncle. Whatever it was, something had her speaking very uncharacteristically Anna. Yet totally Bella. It worked.

What followed was a long pause and much sighing from her uncle.

"Anything else?" she asked to break the silence and give him little time to think about his next chess move. Usually the last thing she would ask-an open-ended questions inviting more criticism-but again something inside her moved her to be bold, to sound assertive and unflappable. She waited for his response, feeling strongly, Give me everything you've got right here right now because I aint budging off my position, its Bella's life to live and now its mine too.

It was a huge bluff.

Luckily it had the desired effect. He bought it. "I will have plenty to say later" he threatened, "but I gotta go now."

Liar, she thought, I just won round one. That's why you 'gotta go now.' From the depths of her newly accessed self-assuredness, Anna ended with one more thing, one more "I'm so super confident in myself and this decision to go to Venice that you can't touch me."

"Can you believe how lucky I am?" It was, as her sister Bella would say, a classic cross-examination ending question. No matter what the witness answered, the jury members would shake their heads and look at the witness pitifully because the question didn't need a response. With raised eyebrows, the lawyer could look at the jury and nod "yes, I got em" and wait. Without removing his gaze from the sympathetic jury, all one with the lawyer unified against the witness, she could say "No further questions. You may step down."

What was her uncle's pathetic response?

"Oh brother" he said. In disgust, he hung-up.

"No further questions. You may step down," she said to her imaginary judge and jury, knowing she had won an important round with another family member hostile witness.

She still had a slight problem. She hadn't asked her sister if she could stay with her or told her she was coming. Although Bella had invited her for the last two weeks of her trip, Anna needed to call Bella right away before her mother, Georgia got to her. Perhaps she was also going to need her own place just in case, Anna began to wonder as she thought about the handsome italian waiter that her imagination had conjured for her, but also because Bella was sure to be quite cross after that phone call with her mother that was surely taking place as she was speaking with her uncle.

A sneaky sensation of her own addiction to Venice popped up on her again. Its voice said "You want your own apartment because you really don't want to come back from Venice either."

Anna began arguing with the voice. Did you ever have a thought like that? One you were just simply appalled at hearing inside your head about yourself?" Trying to make it all better for herself, this transformation that was going on inside her was remarkable but disconcerting. The argument continued, like the one that goes "You are fat. You are stupid. You are fill-in-the-blanks" then adds "you are perfect, you love yourself." The kind of thoughts that are part intuition, part secret wish, an undeserved one or one so forbidden the thought has never been allowed to surface before. may encourage or say it to them, and usually when you hear it yourself it was a very good friend or sister or mother who rudely proposed such accusations as "Here is what she think you really want and she think you just might be contemplating it and she say "Go for it."

Her hands shook and she could hardly sit in her seat. She got up, started snapping her fingers, pacing, shaking her hips and head back and forth in a little dance. She didn't care who saw her. What was happening here? She was going to Venice.

Every woman should do it, she first thought then said to the nearest person she could find in the coffee house. She continued to say to anyone who would listen. It didnt go over very well. "I wish" was the common response. By the time she left for Venice she was utterly disgusted with that response. "Quit wishing and do it" she wanted to shout to the world. Perhaps she was turning into Bella? She hoped it would last.

Back to her fantasy about the venetian cafe. Where was I? Anna asked herself.

Ah yes, a beautiful venetian boy with a sexy Italian accent. With broad listless grin, Anna continued her Colorado walk with one foot in the Venetian clouds.

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