In the last chapter, Julia refused to kiss me. She also made the comment that she is not Christine.

Ch 32

Just as Julia said, she disappeared for quite some time. My bladder needed emptying again and I needed to try my strength once more. I sat upright and rolled my pant legs as far up as I could, which was to the knee. The dark bruises to my shins had turned yellow in spots, which seemed like a good sign. The bruises were already starting to heal.

For most of my life, I had enjoyed good health. Perhaps my body knew that there would be no one to care for me and that sickness would be fatal. Whatever the reason, I was the last one in the house to ever catch any illness and wounds healed remarkably well.

Counting to five, I forced myself out of bed and steadied myself on the bedside table, maintaining part of my weight on my arms. Slowly, I stood upright and felt a sharp pain race up my shins to my knees. I cursed several times, then took a step. To my surprise, I stayed upright. One by one, I stepped across the room to the door. The pain diminished with each step, and, bracing myself against the wall, I walked to the water closet and back down the hall without event.

The mishap, as of course there had to be something of disaster, happened when I returned to the room. The moment I walked in, I stared at the family portrait. Little Lisette sat perched on her mother's lap. She had been a toddler in the painting, a miniature of her mother in every way. The two sitting together would have been angelic had it not been for the devil beside them. The longer I stared the more hellacious my anger turned and the more determined I was to destroy the memory of him.

"You hit her as well," I said to Louis Seuratti. "I heard you the week before you died how you struck Lisette. I nearly came for you then for slapping her little face but the moon was full and I couldn't come for you then." I paused, waiting for his expression to change, willing him to come back to life so that I would have the joy of killing him again.

My legs had healed enough so that I could walk, and though I knew I could return home by nightfall, I had no interest in that canvas staring at me a moment longer.

"Julia is mine now. I will make her mine," I said to him as I inched forward. "You never deserved her, you son of a bitch."

Two steps from the wall, my foot caught against the wheelchair and I pitched forward, catching myself on my hands, but not before I hit my forehead on the dresser. In the back of my mind, I heard Louis Seuratti cackle in delight of my mishap.

A red sheet of blood flooded down from the reopened wound and I rolled from face down to sitting on the floor. I pressed both hands to my face and drew them back. The amount of blood made me nauseous. Without thinking, I smeared the crimson stain onto the wooden floor and onto my pant legs, then attempted to stop the flow of blood by pressing my fingers onto the injury.

"Laugh all you want," I muttered bitterly. "I will sleep in her bed again, and you? You know nothing but worms and rot."

The blow to the head made me dizzy after several minutes, as the shock of what I had just done sank in. To keep the room from swirling, I laid my head down on the floor, back in my own blood, and breathed through my mouth. Time passed. I did nothing but wait, unable to maintain balance and my stomach.

"My God," I heard Julia's voice after a while. "What in the hell are you doing on the… You're bleeding…what happened to your head? What in the world are you doing?"

I groaned and opened my eyes. "I hate him."

For a moment I blacked out. The next thing I knew, Julia was attempting to roll me from my stomach to my back. That I found amusing in a cynical way, as I outweighed her by at least sixty pounds, if not more. She was muttering something under her breath as she held half a dozen towels to my head.

"Stupid, stupid, prideful man," she scolded. "What are you doing out of bed?"

"If you didn't give me so much water, I wouldn't be out of bed."

"Sit up. You've got blood everywhere; my floors, the dresser, your shirt, pants. I should have known that the children would keep the house neat and you, confined to one room, would make it into a sty." She sighed again in frustration. "Must I tie you to the bed?"

Despite the pain, I smiled at her. "As you wish, Madame."

Julia attempted to keep her anger but she failed miserably, allowing a slight laugh to escape her lips. "Idiot," she muttered. "You are maddening, do you know that? You dreadful pig of a man."

My hand replaced hers in keeping the towels in place. "Take the painting down. I can't stand it a moment longer."

"Is that why you are out of bed?"

"No, I told you why I was out of bed." Did she ever listen to me? She was quick to assume I was up to something. What would ever give her that impression, I wondered? "But I don't want to have him look at you—or me."

She regarded me a moment but eventually nodded, deciding not to question my hatred for a portrait. I watched as she rose to her feet, went to the wall, and removed the painting. She left it facing backwards, propped up against the wall. When she turned, she knew I was staring at her from behind and shook her head.

"Worse than a dog in heat," she said as she crossed her arms and stood over me. "Up with you, Erik. If you managed to make your way down the hall, I trust you can stand again. I'll stitch you up again once I clean my hands."

She left again and I managed to crawl to the bed and climb back beneath the covers. She returned and shook her head in disapproval. "You can't lie there covered in blood. Change your clothes," she ordered. She went to the dresser, pulled out a new shirt and pants suitable for sleeping, and left them hanging over the bedside chair.

"Are you staying?" I asked.

Her eyes widened, then narrowed in disgust. "You have ten minutes. If you are not properly dressed when I return, you may stitch yourself up."

I nodded, deciding not to grate on her nerves any more than I had. My comments thus far had done nothing to warm my bed.

Once I was redressed, she knocked on the door and entered. Her face appeared flushed, her chest—which of course I noticed—rose and fell in rapid movements.

"What is it?" I asked as she plopped into the chair and rubbed her eyes with her fists.

"Nothing. Close your eyes and lay your head back."

"You look exhausted," I commented. I did as she asked and closed my eyes to her, finding it easier to speak when I didn't meet her gaze.

"You are not the only one who needs to be cared for in the house," she commented.

Julia cleaned the wound swiftly, so swiftly that I was barely aware of what she was doing before it was over. I heard her snip the end off her thread. Without notice, she pierced the bruised, swollen skin.

My back arched and I sucked in a breath. "My God, that hurts."

"I expected so. Relax."

"Relax? There is a piece of curved metal moving beneath my skin," I said under my breath.

"Had you not been so concerned over a portrait, you wouldn't be stitched up again."

"I hate him."

"So do I," she whispered, concentrating on keeping my head together.

Each time the needle passed through, I flinched. My eyes began to water from the continuous pain and soon my sinuses were draining. She handed me a towel to hold to my nose.

"Then why do you keep it?"

Julia paused a moment. "For Lisette."

"So that she may cherish a man who hit her mother?" I asked angrily. She didn't know that I had seen Louis hit Lisette and I decided it was for the best not to mention it now, while she held an object of great pain inches from my eyes.

"So that she may know her father and love him. She has no one else besides me. If she can look at it and find peace in his image, so be it," Julia muttered. She sighed again. "You're still bleeding badly. Hold the towel a moment. I need something more to clear the blood."

Before I even knew what she was doing, Julia opened the drawer and rummaged through for something to clean the reopened wound. My eyes popped open. I watched her in horror, my face flushed, my eyes widened to witness every macabre detail. She placed several cleaning clothes and an amber bottle on the table top. Then she stopped.

That damned wax figure, I thought. How could there possibly be another space for a nail in my coffin?

She shut the drawer and turned back to me and her eyes settled on my forehead. She hadn't seen it. Or she had and ignored it.

"It looks like the blood has stopped flowing so quickly. Close your eyes again."

"Why didn't you ever marry again?" I asked suddenly, still bothered by Louis Seuratti, who remained in the room with his back to us.

"I had you."

That made me grunt, despite her mocking me. "You'd be happier if you weren't here alone," I replied. It seemed appropriate though I hoped she would never marry for my own selfish reasons.

Julia stopped and I opened my eyes. She smiled forlornly and dabbed my head again. "I never wanted to marry in the first place," she said quietly. "Louis was my grandfather's design. They knew each other from the army. Pappi thought he would be good. He said he would tame my spirit." She paused. "There is a saying: blue eyes, soul of the devil. He was always certain that I was possessed by something. He and Mammi both."

Exactly how I knew her maiden name was unclear. Perhaps Madeline had mentioned it at one time or another, but I had always known that Julia was a Falchetti, a Sicilian girl from a strict Catholic family. Half of her family had moved just outside of Paris when she was ten. There were hundreds of Falchetti's in and around Paris as, being Catholic, there were eighteen children in her family and all, aside from Julia, had a large number of their own offspring. All of them were slaughter house workers or politicians. Frankly, it was impossible to tell one from the next.

Julia was the only one not married, and, because of her status, she was the only one separated from the family. None of her sisters or brothers came to visit her, even after their parents had passed away. Only once had she ever mentioned it to me. It was the only time I had ever seen her cry before the incident with the boy, which had led me to her home.

"What does an arranged marriage have to do with you never marrying again?" I persisted.

"My brother, Antonio, would find me a suitable match. He thinks I am still in mourning. No, I take that back. He knows I was never in morning. He suspects I have become a woman of low station. He thinks it is perverse that there is a man who comes to my home several times a week."

"He knows?" I wondered if she talked about me. The idea was arousing.

"He suspects. The last time I saw him, he told me that when I came to my senses, he would find a man forgiving enough to take me."

There was no way to continue with the conversation without my irritation flaring again. Her own brother insulted her.

I decided to change the subject.

"Why do you look so terrible—" A perfect segue. I recovered quickly, for once, "Your eyes are red. Why are you so tired?"

"I can't sleep," she said as she pulled the needle and thread through my skin. "And don't you even say a word that I need someone with me at night."

She could have tortured me far worse physically if I said a word. I gave a wry smile as a sign of a truce to my lecherous thoughts. "Why aren't you sleeping, then?"

"I don't know."

"This is excruciating. The least you could do at the moment is tell me the truth."

She hesitated, "It's Alexandre."

"What has he done?"

"No, he's done nothing. I'm…I'm afraid for him, Erik. Every time I close my eyes, I see the vicomte. I think he'll know that Alex is here. I keep seeing him knock on the front door, push me aside, and take Alex. If he tried, there is nothing I could do to stop him and it frightens me. I don't want him to hurt Alexandre."

I felt the ends of the thread pulled, forming a knot, and I opened my eyes. Her face was streaked in tears, her lip trembling.

"He won't come here."

"You have no idea what he would do."

"No, I don't, but if he comes here...if he comes near Alex, I will kill him. If he so much as touches you—if he even thinks of touching you—I will rip his head from his shoulders."

Julia shook her head and wiped the corners of her eyes. "A pleasant thought," she said as she sniffled. She rose from the bed, straightened her dress, and opened the drawer again.

The thread in her hand dropped back into the drawer and she paused, moving something out of the way. My heart stopped. I knew she had seen it.

She swept Wax Christine up from the drawer and turned the figurine over in her hand for a moment, curiosity piqued. I imagine she tried to identify it first as one of her daughter's playthings, which made everything a great deal worse when she finally turned and looked at me. How I wished there had been medication available for humiliation.

At first she said nothing. She simply went back and forth between looking at me, then the object in hand. Perhaps this was far beyond the perversion she ever conceived even I was capable of. My only hope was that she didn't laugh. As ridiculous as it was, it had been mine for years.

"This is her?" Julia asked at last.

With eyes averted, I nodded, feeling yet again the burn of shame. This thing, this simple object, was not something I had ever been proud of keeping. All of my loneliness was contained in this one simple figure of longing. She was my obsession, my heartache, my every need for the majority of my life. She was my deepest pain, my greatest joy, my most unbearable regret. This is what I sat awake with at night and caressed, what I held for hours on end and stared at.

She had driven me mad. I hadn't even realized it until Julia had held it in her hands.

"I suspect you have no explanation to give willingly?" Julia asked at last. She straightened, tossed Wax Christine back into the drawer, and folded her arms. To my relief, she said nothing more.

"No."

Julia shook her head and turned away, staring at the backwards painting. "I find it quite ironic that you cannot accept that there is a picture of my dead husband within my house when you have a wax figurine of a woman who left you for dead in an alley at your bedside."

She said it to shame me, I know, but in the back of my mind I thought of what she had said earlier. I couldn't fight with her a moment longer. The trench of vile words and actions I had dug needed to be filled and forgotten.

I opened the drawer, removed the figurine that had served as a replacement for Christine, and slammed it into the table. It broke it into two pieces against the edge, with small crumbles falling to the floor.

"That is how much I think of her," I said, and I tossed the two pieces onto the dresser, into the heap of bloodied towels and bandages, into the pile garbage where it belonged. "That is how much I need her memory."

Neither of us said another word. Julia turned around and stared at the two chunks of painted wax for a moment. She looked at me, straight in the eye, and leaned over. With one hand on the bed to brace herself, she pushed back what little hair there was from my face, and kissed me once on the cheek.

My eyes closed and I shuddered with the warmth of her touch. She felt like sunlight, like purity, like everything I had ever needed to survive. That was the single most pleasurable moment I had ever experienced in my life.

And when it ended, I wanted more.