In the last two chapters, Christine came to Julia's door and gave her a letter for me. She said she wants to see Alexandre. Julia and I then had a confrontation about Christine and my affection for her. She also mentioned that while I love Alex and the dog (and I don't love the dog, it's just a dog and i need to make sure someone is taking care of it), I never said it aloud. I told her that they know that I love them (fine. I like the dog.). She then asked if it would matter to me if she said it aloud...

Ch 36

Often, especially in the years when there was no one to speak with, I started to talk to myself. There had been no other choice. There was only so much time one could spend playing the organ, writing music, reading books, or eavesdropping on the dancers, who quite frankly had nothing of importance to say and walked around in the nude so often that it became mundane.

I had been my only companion. Even to myself, I was never a good friend.

It took everything inside of me to fight the urge to look at Julia. I was convinced that this was a delusion. The day had been stressful, too stressful. The only explanation was that I was making myself physically and mentally ill. There was no possible way she could say the three words I so desperately wanted to hear, the three small words no one had ever bothered to say to me.

Three words. That was what Julia offered me as she stood in the doorway. Three words that I had often heard echoing through the many corridors and tunnels of the opera house I once haunted. Words spoken in haste as men unlaced bodices and women unbuttoned trousers, words spoken from mothers to their children, and from little ones to their parents on the street.

My God how it hurt to want something so small yet so profound, how it ripped everything inside me.

"Erik?"

Julia waited for me to answer her. The silence was so complete that I was afraid I was going mad. I was afraid that she had gone back into the kitchen and that the voice I had heard was something detached, something that only existed within my mind.

I nodded though I couldn't look at her. There was too much at stake, too much she may have offered that I wanted so badly. If she wasn't real, I would scream. I would bang my head against the wall, jump out the window, hang myself, or slash my wrists. Something. I would do something. I couldn't take it a moment longer. This was torment unlike anything else. First there was Christine coming back for Alex and now Julia at the door one moment then at the bedside the next.

Julia wouldn't be there if I looked up, I told myself. She was only in my mind. She couldn't care for me. She just couldn't. No one could. I was too old for this wanting, for such foolish desires.

"You don't have to say it," I whispered. My hands balled into fists and I glanced up at her. "You were right."

Julia was silent for a moment. "Right about what?"

"Everything you said before…lust, obsession…I don't know love."

Christine had been my obsession. After everything that happened, she was still my obsession.

"Oh, Erik, I owe you an apology," Julia said quietly. Her hand touched mine and I exhaled hard as if the contact had punched the air from my lungs.

"What I said then, what I said today…You are not beyond hope," Julia said. I could barely hear her she was speaking so low. Her fingers laced through mine as she rested her palm on the back of my hand.

We had never held hands before, not once in five years. I had never kissed her, I had never held her hand, I had simply climbed on top of her. That was the extent of our relationship. A beautiful, young woman had sacrificed five years of her life to me for what? For nothing, absolutely nothing in return.

"You're not," she said again. "You're not hopeless. Forgive me for saying that."

I merely nodded. She had no idea how hopeless I felt, how absolutely lost I was within my own body. There had been a stranger contained within a mind, a stranger who had strived for something that had been impossible for years. There was a madman who had, for the last year, wanted to use my son as bait for an indecent, ludicrous dream.

That stranger was me. And I had forgotten how much Christine had destroyed me the first night I told her that I loved her, the first night she had gifted me with her virginity but taken away so much more than mine. She had humiliated me and I had allowed it. Because I loved her and I thought she would change her mind, because I wanted her and thought that in time I would have her.

"You're a good man, I know you are. You love your son, you even love that dog. I know you do. I care for you, Erik, I honestly do, but if you love Christine—"

"May I tell you something?" I asked suddenly. The words came out before I knew what I was doing.

Julia nodded.

"When she gifted me with herself," I began hesitatingly.

Slowly, like a bit of rock from a wall, the thought, the anguish that had built an entire mountain range within my mind, began to crumble. I hadn't even said anything but already nine years of pain began to diminish. I knew I would tell her everything. I would tell Julia what I had never told anyone.

"You flatter her far too much," Julia said under her breath. "She gave you a son, Erik. That was the only gift she gave you."

I nodded and squeezed Julia's hand tighter. My eyes closed to the memory, to the complete humiliation of that night.

"She asked me to take her from behind," I whispered. A shudder rattled through me, starting up from my bones to surface of my skin. "So that she would not see my face when I…had her…for the first time."

Julia's fingers twitched. The smallest breath left her mouth.

The mountain I had kept for so long cracked right down the middle. I had told her. I had told someone what for years had haunted me, a ghost.

"I did as she asked because I loved her…and I wanted to make love to her. Both times she came to bed with me, I did as she asked, hoping she would stay with me. Over and over I told her that I loved her. She smiled wanly at me—no—not even at me, she looked in my direction, but said nothing. Then she left me. For weeks she was gone. For weeks, I wanted her back.

"The second time she came to me…the second time…we…she allowed me to have her, I even wore a scarf over my head so that if the mask fell off..."

"Oh, Erik," Julia whispered. Her fingers tightened over mine. I heard her draw a breath in through her nose, a quick, sharp breath.

"Everything I did, I did for her and only her. Every day that I woke, it was to hear her voice, to train her, to strengthen her for the stage. She knew I loved her, she knew I wanted her success, she knew that I wanted her with me, that I would have done anything for her. She knew everything. She knew that she took everything from me that night, that first night." My eyes opened and stared at the letter on the desk. "And now she wants the only thing I have left."

Reluctantly, I removed my hand from Julia's grasp and took the letter from the desk. The moment my hand ripped the wax away, a rush of anger hit me square in the chest.

She had left me a letter. She had said that she wanted to see her son and she had handed Julia a letter addressed to me. After all these years of thinking that we no longer existed. After she had said she wanted nothing to do with us, after she had abandoned her son, after she had allowed me to teach her, after she had sucked out the last bit of dignity I possessed.

She wanted Alex.

Julia shifted on the bed and straightened her skirt as I pressed my fingers harder into the envelope. "The children—"

I unfolded the paper in my hands and tossed the envelope aside. I glanced up at her and nodded. "Feed them."

Julia nodded and rose from the bed. "I'll return as quickly as I can. I should probably clean the stitches and check on your bruises. The bathwater—"

I reached for her wrist before she could finish, holding her with me a moment longer. From the placement of my finger and thumb, I could feel her pulse beating through her wrist.

My mind had constructed all that I wanted to say to her but cowardice pushed my eyes from hers. I could still see Christine as she rose wordlessly from the bed, dressed, and mumbled that she wanted to return back to her room. She had not even looked at me as I led her to the boat and took her across the lake. She said nothing as I helped her onto the shore and tried to see her to her room. She waved me away from her, crawled into bed, and went to sleep. I returned to my lair alone, empty, and in no way proud of what I had done or what I had become. My love for her had turned shameful.

"Why didn't you ever face away from me?" I asked Julia, averting my eyes.

Julia touched my chin and I stared up at her, fearing humiliation but craving her attention. I could still feel her pulse, her life in her veins, in my grasp.

"Because I love you," she answered.