In the last chapter, Christine came to Julia's door with a letter for me. She wants to see Alex. For the first time, she called him her son.

Ch 35

This was madness that not even I could cope with any longer. I screamed as the door shut and slammed my hand into the wall. The pain meant nothing aside from that I was still alive and still feeling every ounce of agony.

I could barely think anymore. She had said she wanted nothing to do with Alex. She had said it. She had said it!

Everything she ever promised was nothing but lies; everything she did to me was poison. She had said in her hotel room that she didn't want the boy to find me yet she let him escort me from the room. She knew damn well what would happen. All of these years I had waited for her, I had bled myself dry for her memory, I had ached until there was nothing but numbness and I was more a shell than a man.

And now she wanted Alex. She wanted the only thing I had left from one night I had spent with her, one night that felt like the heaviest of weights and the deepest of scars.

Now she wanted my son, because at that point he was only my son. He had always been mine, never hers. She hadn't even had the nerve—no, no it had nothing to do with nerve. She hadn't had the love, the compassion, the dignity to give him a name. I had named him. I had forgotten that I had named him the moment Madeline hesitantly placed him into my arms. A three month-old infant given to his father, to a beast, to a thing that no one ever wanted to see. He was nameless, screaming for his mother, eyes pinched shut at the horror before his little gray eyes. He had no idea that I wanted to weep as well for his future, that I had silently sworn he would be protected. He just didn't know that his protector would be a monster.

Suddenly, I felt that there was a greater monster in the world than even I for I had loved him. I just hadn't always shown it. That angered me as well.

My anger was short-lived. Julia was furious with me. I didn't see her coming down the hall until it was too late.

She stormed towards me, seething in anger, and tore my hand from my face, blocking the shield I had put over my right side while Christine was present. She looked me in the eye, her mouth hardened as she shook her head so lightly that I barely even noticed.

My mouth opened to speak but she glared at me and I stopped.

"Look me in the eye and tell me honestly: have you prevented her from knowing her own son?"

At first I said nothing. She couldn't have possibly known that I had wanted to bait Christine by keeping Alex from her. The very idea to me, as I looked Julia in the eye, seemed more contemptuous than I had ever thought. It was as though I saw myself from someone else's eyes and the ugliness I witnessed had nothing to do with my mangled face. The thought disturbed me so greatly that I stood stock still and stared into nothingness.

What had I done?

"Erik, have you kept this woman from seeing her own son?" Julia asked more assertively than before.

"No, I haven't."

She didn't believe me. Of course I didn't blame her. I wondered even as I spoke if I was telling her the truth.

"Erik—"

"Alex is upstairs. What she said to me, I don't want him to hear," I stated plainly. "He doesn't need to…he doesn't need to hurt that much."

Julia nodded, understanding, at least, that I was protecting Alex from something. She moved her hair away from her face and sighed sharply at me. "Well, she has a letter for you. Come, get yourself back into bed. I'll check on the children and fix them both lunch. When I return—"

"You want to read the letter."

Julia straightened and crossed her arms. Of course she wouldn't go out and say that she wanted to know what the letter said. "I want the truth, Erik. I want to know exactly what I have gotten myself into." She looked away from me and glanced down the hallway to be certain the children had not appeared. She stepped closer, so close that I could feel her breath on my face when she looked at me again.

"He's not safe here," she whispered. She exhaled sharply and turned away. She stared for a moment at the staircase, then turned back to me. Her nerves were on end. She had to keep her voice quiet. The last thing she wanted was for Lisette and Alex tohear her despite undoubtedly wanting to scream at me for leaving the bedroom. "She knows he's here because you're here. Her husband will know he is here and then what will happen? What will they do?"

"Not a damned thing," I answered brazenly.

"You are driving me mad! Why couldn't you listen just this once?Why couldn't youstay inside the guest room? She wouldn't know you are here if you had just once done as I asked you. Have you learned nothing at all? How can you be so selfish, Erik? How is it even possible?"

"They already knew," I said, attempting to remain calm. She was losing her temper with me. If she struck me I would have to hold her by the wrists until she calmed down.

"They know you are here because you made yourself seen!" she shout-whispered, poking me in the chest with her finger.

"She knew before that. If she didn't know, she wouldn't have come here," I replied, keeping my voice low.

"For a ghost, you aren't very clever in moving about and going unseen. If you had wanted…" She paused, her eyes narrowing. "No, you are clever. You wanted her to see you…and you wanted to see her as well, one last time. One last time, Erik, how dare you."

"That wasn't why I was out in the hallway."

"Of course not," she snapped. "Why on earth would you want her to see you again? Certainly you didn't do it to win her back and certainly you had no intention of making a fool of yourself in front of her yet again, then what? My God, she's pretty but not pretty enough to wait ten years for, you fool."

"It's been nine years," I corrected her.

"Even worse!"

"How can that be worse? It's a year less than what you just said."

"Because you probably know to the day how long it's been since you were this close to her before." She turned away from me. "You…you're hopeless. You are utterly hopeless, Erik." Julia spun on her heel and faced me again, prepared to insult me again.

"I didn't walk out here to see her! The only thing I could think of when I saw her was how much I despised her for everything," I shouted suddenly. "You have no idea how I felt for her. How I still feel for her. How I hate her for everything."

"Keep your voice down and don't you dare lie to me. You walked into this hallway to see her face and nothing more. Don't you dare look me in the face and tell me anything so bold. You are incapable of hating her!"

"I do hate her. I hate her almost as much as I hate myself for ever looking at her in the first place."

She grunted at my boorish display. "Then why did you have to come running out here, holding your hand over your face and tossing on that ridiculous thing," she said as she pointed at my head.

"Quit insulting me! I'm tired of you, of all people, mocking my appearance!"

Her expression changed from anger to remorse and her voice lowered. "I would never mock your appearance. Why do you think I've kept the mask away from you? If I didn't want to look at you, I would have torn holes in your pillow case and told you to cover your face."

I shuddered at her words. She had not asked me to stay hidden from her. She had unmasked me in every way possible and not once flinched. The thought crossed my mind that I should have fallen to my hands and knees at her feet and thanked her for allowing me to stand before her in my miserable condition. To keep from weeping, to keep from breaking down like a child, I continued to shout out at her, using my disdain for Christine to shout again. "He could have broken down your door!"

"What on earth are you talking about? What does this have to do with anything I just said?"

"I'm telling you why I came out into the hallway! The vicomte, the boy, her husband, the man who nearly beat me to death, Julia, damn it, who do you think?" I continued to shout, far too agitated to care if Alex and Lisette heard what I had to say. I grabbed her by the shoulders and held her against my chest. "If he was here, if he wanted to enter your house he would have. That's why I came out. To protect you from him. You said yourself that you feared he would come in here."

Julia struggled against my grasp but decided it was useless and gave in, allowing me to hold her. The feel of her, the warmth of her, steadied my erratic breathing and forced me to lower my voice.

"I don't want him to hurt you," I said.

"I am not the one in danger."

"Do you think that honestly?" I let her go then. She took a half-step back from me, enough so that we were no longer up against one another but not enough to display a sense of fear at being near me while I was unmasked.

"I don't know what to think."

"He bruised her wrist."

Julia snorted at me. "Why would you even care what happens to her?"

Again, I shouted. "Because I'm a damned fool and I still care for her!" I took a deep breath and settled myself enough to speak in a voice suitable for being indoors. "Until the day I die, I will probably still care for her! She could slit my throat and I wouldn't think ill of her. You don't understand, Julia, how long she has been on my mind. Nearly twenty years of my life. I can't just forget her. I can't."

She stared at me long and hard, debating on whether or not she had to dig farther into Pandora's Box. At last, she decided not to delve any deeper. "And what good would it be for you to stand out in the hallway? If he was here, what would you do? Antagonize him and finally have him kill you?"

"I would have fought him long enough for the three of you to escape. Then I would have killed him."

"Oh, Erik! You can barely stand!"

"I don't need to stand to kill him!"

She stared at me, hatred in her eyes turning into something I had never seen before. My arms tensed, my hands turned to fists and jaw clenched. If she wished to argue, then so be it. I would fight her word for word.

But she didn't say anything. Not for a while. The anger left her eyes completely. At first, as her face contorted, I thought she was about to cry. Tears would have been worse than arguing with her. I was prepared to have her yell at me, but I wasn't prepared to handle any other emotion. But her eyes never grew moist, thank God. Something equally unexpected happened. She was amused. Damn her, she found my outburst amusing.

She laughed then unabashedly. She crossed one arm over her chest, turned her face away and laughed into her hand. I stood appalled by her reaction.

"Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? Even for you, that's delusional."

I turned away, staring at the opened guest room door. "I want to lie down again," I said, tiring of her banter.

"Your lunch will be ready within the hour. If you'd like, I'll draw you a bath once you're done eating." She tapped my shoulder and placed the letter in my hand.

"Fine," I grumbled. "But tell Madeline I want to see her at once with the dog."

"No dogs, Erik, I told you that already."

"Only for a moment. Knowing Madeline and Meg, the creature is probably starving. I'm not returning home to bury some stupid animal."

"You told me before you were going to tie her up and leave her at the back of a restaurant," Julia said as I reached the doorway.

"She's far too old now. No one would eat her." I smiled grimly. "That goes for the dog as well as Madeline."

With one hand against the wall, I reached up and pulled the front of my hair up, then slid it off my head. It felt good to be rid of it again. The stitches beneath had throbbed in agony the entire time I had worn my hairpiece.

Julia came in quietly behind me and stood in the doorway as I climbed back into bed. She watched for a moment, then came forward and removed the used towels and the wax figure broken in two. My face twitched. She would throw it away. I would never see it again.

"What do you fear about love?" she asked suddenly. "You care for your son, you care for that dog, but you cannot say it aloud. Why is that?"

My gaze stayed fixed on the blanket. I studied my hands still holding the black hair I had removed. Artistic hands, I thought. Hands that had created designs for fantastic buildings, hands that had created the most tragic of compositions, hands that had created things that were beautiful yet unfeeling.

I realized then how absolutely lonely I truly was, and how at the same time I was terrified to want anything at all. Each time I even thought of something I desired, it was taken away. If I told Alex I loved him, then he would know. He would hurt me, I thought. He would leave me. The dog? Well, the dog already knew I cared about her. But she was only a dog.

And my best companion had become a creature that never needed me to tell her how I felt. She was the only thing I could care for that would never betray me, the only thing that looked at me and saw nothing wrong.

Her question made me start to tremble again. I cleared my throat and tossed the hairpiece onto the table where the rags and the wax figure had sat beside me. "They know that I love them. It doesn't matter if I say it aloud or not."

"Would it matter to you if I said it aloud?"