Free Mira's Diary by Marissa Moss Page B

impoverished that it needs to beg for pennies on the street.” He threw down the chalks. “Enough for today, Mireille. You can dress and go.”
    â€œPlease don’t stop. I love to watch you draw.” The spell was broken, but the sketch was still there, raw and unfinished but powerful all the same.
    â€œWatch me draw?” Degas barked a short laugh. “Art isn’t a spectator sport. It’s the finished piece that matters.”
    I didn’t agree with him and thought the privilege of seeing him create was just as important as the finished drawing itself. Still, I didn’t want to be a nuisance. I couldn’t sketch if someone was looking over my shoulder. “I didn’t want to interrupt you,” I said, sitting down next to Degas, my eyes still on his picture. “I was just eager to see you after so many years.”
    â€œMe? What about poor Claude? He took your leaving rather hard, you know.”
    He did? He cared about me? My face flushed pink with embarrassment. And then I felt awful—I’d hurt Claude! He must have thought I had run away from his kiss. I was terrible at this time-travel stuff. Why had Mom called this a gift? It didn’t feel like one. I struggled to find something believable to say to Degas to explain my horrible behavior.
    â€œYou must believe me that it was urgent, I didn’t want to, but I had to go. I had no time to say good-bye.” I could barely meet Degas’s eyes. He must despise me. “I wish I could take it all back and do things differently, really I do.” For once I was telling the truth.
    â€œYou do not owe me an apology. Your life is yours to do with as you please.”
    â€œBut it wasn’t as I pleased! I wanted to stay here with you, with Claude!” I tried not to cry, but just then Claude walked in with Degas’s lunch and I couldn’t stop the tears from gushing.
    He was a man now, taller, filled out, with a beard, but it was definitely him. He saw me and froze.
    â€œMira?” He looked astonished and anguished at once.
    I swallowed my tears and wiped my eyes. “Oh, Claude, please forgive me! I didn’t want to leave, but I did, and you haven’t heard from me in so long!”
    â€œMira, it really is you!” Claude put down the sandwiches wrapped in newspaper he’d brought for lunch. He knelt next to me and handed me his handkerchief. “Do not cry! We are not angry with you, are we, Degas?”
    â€œI was never angry with Mira, not for a second,” Degas said. “I thought you had gone to America to bring me back a turkey buzzard. Have you?”
    I sniffled but couldn’t help smiling. “Again with the turkey buzzards,” I murmured. I was wearing the same dress as when we were together in the park, that day of the almost-kiss. I wondered if Claude remembered.
    â€œIt is astonishing! You are precisely the same. Precisely!”
    â€œOh, these Americans,” Degas drawled. “They are a young country, you know. Babies, all of them. It is the same in Tahiti. Gauguin writes that the women there simply do not age the way our French country lasses do. As if the more primitive way they live smooths away wrinkles, vanquishes gray hair. But in any case youth is overrated. Anyone can be a genius at twenty-five. The trick is to be one at fifty.”
    He was talking as if nothing had changed, as if I hadn’t vanished for more than a decade and turned up out of nowhere. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and kiss him in gratitude.
    â€œSo you forgive me?”
    â€œThere is nothing to forgive, is there, Claude?” Degas gave him one of his rare smiles.
    â€œOf course not! We hope this time you can stay.”
    â€œI hope so too,” I said. I really did. For a minute I forgot what time I belonged in. It was tempting to think I could stay here with Claude for good. But he was already too old for me. And I wasn’t a