In the last chapter, I shared my greatest moment of humiliation. My love for Christine now seems rather foolish. Julia, after I told her what I have been holding inside foralmost ten yeras,said that she loved me.

Ch 37

Her words made me shiver.

There was weight to hatred that I had never known existed, a stone within my chest that had rumbled around and killed everything else. Forty years this weight had existed, increased as the years went by. Forty years of suspended hope, of praying until my voice was hoarse and I could no longer weep. Forty years of kneeling until my knees were bruised from groveling for God's mercy. Four decades of shaking with fear for my pathetic fate and the redemption I was certain would never come.

I had waited all of those years, knowing those three words would never be said to me no matter what I did. All of my life had been spent despising this thing that I was, of cursing the horrors both inside and out.

And then Julia, who came in like the Blue Faerie of Collodi's tale, offered a chance to be real, to shed my heart of stone, to leave behind wooden limbs…to live.

But why? What was in it for her? What did she want from me?

Julia looked at me with an enigmatic smile, a living, breathing Mona Lisa. I released her wrist and swallowed hard, attempting to absorb her words.

Because I love you.

Suddenly I shook my head. There had been too many years of cynicism, of being bitter and melancholy to accept her words as they had come.

"Why?" I asked. No, I demanded. I spoke through my teeth and watched as her eyes widened. Forty years of waiting for this moment and I didn't even have the decency to show gratitude for her words.

Julia exhaled and sat down in the chair. "Oh, Erik, I should have known you would ask such a thing." She sat back and glanced at the painting propped up against the wall. "When my grandfather first brought me to meet Louis, I was beside myself with joy. I ran to every house on the block, every friend I had, and squealed out to them how lucky I was to have such a handsome fiancé." She shook her head. "I thought there was no way I could have been more fortunate than finding Louis."

Julia had rarely mentioned him, aside from in passing when it had something to do with Lisette. She knew I had no interest in her dead husband.

"Two months before we were married I discovered that I was pregnant. He accused me of sleeping with another man because he himself had slept with several girls and not one of them had conceived a child. He threatened not to marry me. He threatened to tell my grandfather, my father, all of my brothers. But I told him that if he did that no one would believe him. My mother, my grandmother, my sisters wouldn't believe a word of it.

"So he stayed quiet. We married, and on our wedding night, he left. He told me I was already used up and he went out for the night. We didn't consummate our marriage for a month. He had other women to satisfy him, other women he had slept with before he had ever agreed to marry me. Eventually I found out that there were two other women who had daughters of his, one in Florence, one here in Paris."

Julia was quiet for a moment. Her eyes looked so distant, her complexion sallow, as if the very thought made her ill. It sickened me to think of her in pain. It sickened me to think I hadn't strangled Louis Seuratti the day I moved into my home and first saw him.

She laid her hand over mine and smiled wanly. "And then I saw you one night in the window, and I heard you sing and play the violin. It was beautiful…I felt something… different."

It alarmed me that I had not been more careful to keep her from seeing me. When I looked at her, I knew why I hadn't.

I had wanted her to see me.

"You concentrated so much on your music that you didn't notice me. I turned down the lamp and just sat for hours, listening with my eyes closed. When Louis finally came home he was the ugliest man I had ever seen. I hated him for leaving me every night, for how he ignored Lisette, for everything. I hated him for everything.

"And I told him. I slapped him across the face and I told him that I hated him and he was nothing to me, that he was lower than garbage. He beat me that night and he forced me into bed with him. Then he went to my grandfather the next morning and told him that their grandchild, that their beautiful granddaughter, belonged to another man, that I had confessed to him the night before." She blinked once but did nothing to stop the tears rolling freely down her face. "They believed him and they never spoke to me again. He could do anything with me that he wanted and he knew it. He knew no one would protest him and that I wasn't strong enough to fight him."

My lips parted in astonishment and the letter from Christine fell from my grasp. My emotions balanced between absolute rage and the hot stabbing pain of sorrow. Somehow I found her hand and we sat together doing nothing more than breathing and clinging to a half that was just as broken as ourselves.

"You love me because I strangled him?" I murmured. She could not love me for anything else but the relief I had granted her.

Julia shook her head. Her lips tightened as she searched for her voice. "That isn't love, Erik, that's gratitude."

"Then why?" I breathed. There was a reason, a reason for her words. I needed to know what that reason was, why she had dared to say such a thing.

"Because you've been good to me all these years. You've only come to me when I've asked for your company. Not once have you raised your hand at me, not even when I deserved it."

I shook my head, doubting that there could be any reason for a man to strike her.

"There are things you do that are maddening, absolutely blood-boiling sometimes, but you're…" She smiled and moved her thumb over mine. The movement mesmerized me. "Do you remember when you brought me chocolates?"

As terrible as it was, I didn't. I shook my head.

"Two years ago you brought me candy a week after St. Valentine's Day. You had opened it, but you still brought it over," she laughed.

I nodded, remembering it was candy that Madeline had bought for herself and Meg. She hadn't known that it was dark chocolate and neither of them liked dark chocolate. Alex had made himself sick with indulgence, so I sent the box over to Julia to punish him. She seemed far too impressed and contented for me to ruin her mood with the truth.

"You're a gentleman, Erik, even without intending to be one, you've been a gentleman. You're gruff, you're eccentric, but you're a good man." She paused and searched my eyes. "Everything that I wanted in Louis, everything that he wasn't, you've been to me."

She overwhelmed me. For each word of praise, a dozen more criticisms popped into my mind, a thousand moments that I had said something she didn't deserve to hear, a thousand evenings where I had laid with her and left in the middle of the night. There was nothing chivalrous about the manner in which I left; nothing of a gentile nature about my sneaking into and out of her house.

"No, I haven't been good to you," I mumbled. I sat upright in bed and let go of her hand. "If I had been good to you…I wouldn't be here, not like this, not under these circumstances."

Julia half-smiled. "God knows why, but even though you have made me so mad I thought I would have kittens, I…I have enjoyed you being here. It reminds me of my parents' marriage and how my father would make my mother want to throw things at him." She sighed and her smile widened. "Though I would have rather taken you in for a different reason than this, Erik, I like not being here alone."

If there was anyone who understood the pain of solitude, it was me. I did nothing more than nod.

The clock chimed twice. She started to rise from the chair.

"Lisette and Alex are probably starved to death by now. Erik, I must—"

I grasped her arm and sat her beside me on the bed. Brazenly, I placed my hand against her cheek and smoothed away the tears on the left side, then did the same on the right side. She closed her eyes and lowered her face, exhaling slowly to my touch. Her reaction surprised me. She was…soothed. The slight smile on her face encouraged me to run my finger along her smooth cheek, down to her chin where I stopped.

Her lips caught my attention again. As much as I wanted to kiss her I knew that I shouldn't, not then, not when we were both so wounded. I settled for running my thumb lightly over her lower lip. Another tear slipped from her right eye yet she did something unexpected.

She kissed my thumb. She started to speak but I shushed her and pulled her forward, resting her head against my shoulder. Her arms draped over me and I felt her begin to sob.

Without a thought, I told her that I loved her too.

Julia curled up into a ball and cried herself to sleep against my arm. I heard her breathing even out after a while. Her arms went limp and I knew she was exhausted. I would have left her sleeping though I knew she needed to check on Lisette and Alexandre and make them lunch. My arm had also turned to pins and needles, though I didn't mind. I would have amputated my arm to keep her with me. I would have done anything to keep her from leaving.

She awoke reluctantly at first, though once I told her what time it was she let out a muffled curse, begged God to forgive her, and ran from the room. I smiled to myself as I heard her yell to her daughter and my son that they needed to wash up for lunch.

"We already made food," Lisette replied. "Your food is on the table."

Finally someone was taking care of Julia. Her daughter was a good girl. I hadn't seen much of her, mostly because Julia didn't want her daughter around to witness our evenings together, which I understood and preferred. Despite knowing very little of the girl, I expected that if he hadn't already Alex would soon be developing a strong interest in Lisette.

"May I ask Father to join us?" Alexandre asked.

Julia hesitated. I looked up from the letter I had retrieved again and glanced at my hair. My forehead still throbbed from donning it the first time. The last thing I wanted was to wear it again. No, the last thing I wanted was for Alex to see me without it.

"Wait until dinner, Alex."

There was no reply. I knew he was upset.

After a while, the conversation picked up between the three of them and I gathered Christine's note in my hand. With a heavy sigh, I drowned out the sound of them eating lunch in the kitchen and read her letter.

Erik,

What happened the other day was quite unfortunate. Please understand, I didn't want anything to happen to you. I will be forever grateful to you for being my teacher, my Angel of Music. But now I must ask you for a favor.

I must see Alexander. I believe I have made a mistake, a terrible mistake no mother should ever make. When he first came to live with Mme Giry, I didn't realize that you were also inside the household. I wouldn't have given him to her had I known. I wouldn't have put him through this.

Please understand. I must see him again. I must know who he belongs to.

C Daae