* Father (French)
* My son (French)
CHAPTER 7
Tara
The restoration lab doesn’t look like much from the outside—just another anonymous door tucked into the Louvre’s warren of back corridors—but stepping inside is like entering a chapel.
A holy place where art is God.
The air carries its own perfume: a blend of linseed oil, old varnish, and the faint metallic tang of solvents.
Brushes stand like bouquets in glass jars.
Magnifying lamps hover over easels, their halos of light illuminating cracked surfaces, centuries of wear, and entire histories waiting to be coaxed back to life.
My station is one of many in the windowless restoration lab, where the air is always cool, and the humidity is carefully monitored, ensuring the artworks never suffer. Fluorescent daylight lamps buzz softly overhead, and magnifiers on articulated arms hover like watchful insects.
Before me lies the Rosalba Carriera pastel, a de Valois woman whose powdered wig is barely holding its shape, her gaze dulled by centuries of dust and time. Still, I can see the ghost of her light—my task is to restore her without rewriting her.
When my shoulders ache and my eyes blur, I retreat to the little staff kitchen at the end of the hall. There, beyond the glass windows, the Seine glitters in the weak winter sun.Bateauxslide on her silken waters like lazy brushstrokes.
On the far bank rises the dome of theInstitut de France, solemn and grand, its stone catching the last of the sun’s light. Down below, thebouquinistes’green stalls line the river, their lids propped open like storybooks, hawking postcards and worn novels to anyone who lingers.
Paris is an outdoor museum. Everywhere you look, you see grand buildings. It’s a city out of a dream. And while the City of Lights breathes outside the hallowed halls of the Louvre, inside, it feels as though time itself pauses for me, the art restorer who feels like she’s stepped into a dream.
I tighten my paint-stained scarf that’s holding my hair off my face as I walk back to the lab.
My bangles are scattered on the paint table. I don’t want them to clink against the canvas and bruise it.
I’m in my uniform—boho overalls and comfortable ankle boots.
Comfort first because the work demandsit.
I focus back on the woman in front of me. I lean in with a sable brush, hands steady, heart quiet.
Restoration is patience.
It’s cleaning millimeter by millimeter, stabilizing pigments, filling the smallest fissures so the surface reads whole but not new.
The point isn’t to make the art piece perfect—it’s to let its truth breathe again.
Every time my brush lifts a veil of grime and the original color peeks through, I feel like I’m in conversation with the artist across the centuries.
That’s why I fell in love with this work.
My mother designs jewelry in Los Angeles—delicate, intricate pieces hammered by hand. I grew up at her workbench, watching her file and polish, learning that beauty comes from devotion to detail. She gave me her hands. Myabuela—before she passed away—gave me her love of history. Between them, I suppose this was inevitable.
“Don’t hunch, you’ll regret it when you’re forty.”
I glance up. Cece peers at her canvas, her back straight, a headband holding back her short dark hair.
“I’m twenty-eight,” I tell her. “I’ve already started regretting things.”
She grins. “Not posture. That’s a lifetime injury.”
She tilts her lamp and squints at her canvas. “Can you believe I get to do this? My professors swore that landing a post at the Louvre this soon after universitywas impossible. But here I am, spending my days with grapes and oysters.”
