Julia's words made the oil and canvas likeness all the more unbearable. I turned down the lamp and attempted to fall asleep again, but I knew he still stared, that he gloated over the confrontation. Louis would have enjoyed hearing what Julia had said. No one had hurt her the way I had. One sentence, one ignorant sentence outweighed five years of him hitting her nearly every night. He had slapped her face and pulled her hair, shoved her against the wall and attempted to throw her down the stairs. I was the one who had hurt her.
I wondered if she would have preferred him still alive. Even if she did, I did not regret killing him. Not then, not ever. He would rot in Hell for eternity.
All of her words brought on a Hell of my own. Over and over I heard the words: I knew lust, I knew obsession but not love. Neither of us knew love. That was why our arrangement worked so well. Our arrangement, as I had so crudely put it.
So this is what the fly feels like when it is caught in the spider's web. How lonely I had become, how tangled in the silk and paralyzed by poison. Only the web was my own creation, and the poison I had spoon fed myself in arrogance and ignorance. Equal doses, of course; I would have it no other way.
I shifted in bed, feeling considerably colder than I had earlier. I wanted to call Julia but couldn't bring myself to demand that she find me another blanket, not after all that I had said. We had done enough to each other.
For God's sake, I had told her that I loved her and she had not believed me. While I lay alone, I was starting to wonder if I believed it. The timing, if nothing else, had been convenient.
Still, my need for her grew simply because she was not there. In my mind, I still had her. It would be the only way I would ever have her, and it would never be enough.
I listened to the clock and the sounds of the house settling and thought of Julia. Her face was etched in my thoughts, penetrating the darkness, keeping me company. Upstairs she talked to her daughter. Though I couldn't hear her words through the floor, I had her voice in my head.
An hour passed. She did not return with food or medicine as she had promised though neither concerned me. More than anything I wanted to see her again. I had to be sure I had memorized every detail of her face; the curve of her lips, the exact shade of her eyes, the widow's peak of her hairline.
My task borne out of boredom and frustration was cut short by someone pounding on the front door. The sudden commotion startled me into sitting upright in bed. A wave of agony traveled through me like the tremors of an earthquake as I upset the bruises to my stomach and ribs.
"Julia! Please Julia!" Meg screamed. By the sound of her one would have thought she was being murdered. "Please open the door!"
I lay with my eyes wide in the dark as Julia ran through the house to answer Meg's frenzied plea. Julia sounded like she practically fell down the stairs and I know without a doubt that she misjudged her speed and slammed into the front door. The whole house must have shook. I shuddered on her behalf.
"Meg? Where's Alex?"
"He isn't here?" Meg questioned.
Julia hesitated. "No…Madeline said you would bring him over."
Either they went silent or they decided to whisper to one another. I counted forty-three seconds of silence between the two of them before Julia asked when Alex was last seen.
"Upstairs. Madeline told him not to go up there but he wouldn't listen," Meg told her. She stopped again. "And then….he came to the door."
By 'he' she meant the boy. That was evident by how her voice had turned lower. She knew I was listening. They both did. Go on with the story, Meg, I thought, tell me what has happened to Alex. If the boy had done anything to him—talked to him even, I would strangle that insolent brat with my own bare hands. I would crawl across the earth to see him to his death.
"He never came down?" That was Julia. I heard her walk Meg farther into the house, away from the guest room where they could speak in private.
"He wasn't in there when Mother went up. He must have gone out the window."
Meg's voice had turned higher. Having known her since she was a child, I knew what the change in pitch meant. She wasn't telling the truth. She knew Alex hadn't gone out the window. She may not have known where he went, but she knew he hadn't gone out of the house through the upper window. Without a trellis against the house, he would need to jump like a squirrel to make it to a tree. With all of the time he spends studying with Charles; Alexandre was hardly an agile squirrel.
I knew where he was. The chill had given him away.
"You may stay if you don't turn the lamp up," I said quietly.
A shadow shifted, nearing the bed. "Yes, father," Alexandre answered.
He stood for a while until his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
"Close the window," I told him. "And tell Meg you are here or she'll be worried to death."
His head bobbed then he made his way across the room until I could no longer find him in the dark sea of shadows. He was leaving the room.
"Alex," I said as his hand jiggled the doorknob.
Silence. I knew he hadn't gone yet because the door hadn't opened. His voice emerged meek and trembling. "Yes, Father?"
For a moment I hesitated. Deep inside I wanted to beg him to stay, to grovel for his company, though I would not beg for anything. Once upon a time I had fallen to my knees and treated Christine as a goddess. I would never do it again. My dark kingdom was my own. I would bow and beg to no one.
"Tell Julia you may not wander about the house long. An hour at the most and I expect you in bed."
The doorknob turned. Light fractured the darkness as he opened the door.
"It would be inappropriate for you to stay anywhere in the house," I added, desperate to keep him. "For their dignity, you may only stay here. Is that understood?"
The silence he returned was unbearable. It angered me, his blatant denial.
"Make your decision," I growled. "Either you stay here or you return home."
"I want to stay," he answered frantically. His voice lowered, trembling as he continued. "With you, Father."
The corners of my mouthpulled into a blind smile of gratitude. There was someone still with me, someone still there. He had no idea what weakness lay beneath my gruff tone, the dampness to my eyes once he finally spoke. I had not yet savored the moment when the door opened and his child's silhouette disappeared into the hallway.
As soon as the door opened, both Julia and Meg gasped and rushed toward him, swarming onto him. Theythoroughly checked him over to be certain he was unharmed. I could hear them first cooing at how happy they were to see him, then both snapping at him for the manner in which he left. In darkness I smiled at my magician.
He was as keen as I was at his age, if not more so. Education sharpened an already veracious mind. There were many times when I would find him in the library pulling springs out of an old German clock Madeline had received from a friend Through a mirror I would watch him as he arranged everything that was once inside the clock and placed it on the table. He would rebuilt the complicated apparatus, placing the cuckoo bird in backwards or changing around the little figurines to see if Madeline would notice.
We mirrored one another in actions often. Indeed, I had an idea of how he managed to leave unseen but I had no desire to explore it. Too many secrets unraveled if he pulled that fateful string.
"Father said I could stay with him," Alex said once the two hens stopped clucking.
"Alexandre…" Julia started.
"May I stay with him?"
Her sigh was proof of her skepticism. "Are you hungry?" she asked to change the subject. "There's supper in the kitchen. Save some for your father."
His heavy shoes stamped down the hallway and I heard Lisette's high voice greet him.
I wanted him back with me. The space left in the room once he left grew, swallowing everything.
"Is the vicomte still there?" Julia asked. Her voice lowered. "Careful what you say. He's listening."
Her audacity made me smile.
"Mother was still talking to him when I went upstairs. The last I heard, he had insisted on coming into the house. He had said something about walking all the way from the Wisteria just to see us but I hardly believed that. He's been past the house half a dozen times."
I would kill him if he ever stepped foot in my house. He was the last person welcomed in my home. Madeline would never hear the end of it if she allowed him in for tea.
"Alex is safe here," Julia assured Meg. "He can stay as long as he needs, until this madness has finally passed."
Something else had to have been said but they had decided not to share it with me. I leaned so far over the edge of the bed that I thought I would fall on the floor.
"Did she agree?" Julia asked.
There was a long pause and I was certain that Meg had either nodded or shook her head to whatever they were discussing. My head found a way back to the pillow and I closed my eyes, defeated. They would divulge nothing else to me.
Then Meg spoke again, her voice hushed but still loud enough for me to hear. Yet another form of torture.
"Mother had no other choice."