A/N: To all of my wonderful, patient readers, thank you for waiting and wondering and encouraging me to go on with this story. I do not deserve you.

I've had a stressful time at work of late, changing to a new system, going to training sessions, and covering for people who were in training sessions. I hope things will be smoother soon.

Also, I didn't know why I was having such trouble going on until my writing buddy Maria, who my friends may know has been having stress of her own of late, pointed out that Anne, Erik and little Erik were so happy right now that I didn't want to do what I must do, which is to (at least temporarily) take that happiness away. She also told me I needed to get back to Christine, at least briefly. I do love Maria…

Christine:

Of course I was very much afraid at the time, when the man with the gun pointed it at my head and demanded all the jewels and money we had, but afterward, when I realized that the wretched necklace was gone, I felt such a blessed wave of relief wash over me. It was gone. My beloved Raoul need never find out what I did!

When I chose it from among all the others, Raoul was away in the Arctic. It wasn't the biggest of them, nor the most elaborate, nor the most valuable—just a simple diamond riviere necklace of graduated stones. I didn't know, I couldn't know it was the greatest of the de Chagny family treasures—that it had belonged to poor doomed Marie Antoinette, and that she had placed it around the neck of the then-Countess de Chagny, her favorite lady-in-waiting. It was a Royal relic, almost holy. The price of the piece was not what made it important; the history of it was the thing.

I didn't simply have it copied before I sold it, a stone here and a pair of stones there. I had it copied twice. I was clever—for once.

The first copy I had made was simply an adequate copy—ordinary paste gems, an obviously new setting. If you knew what to look for, you could see that it was not genuine. Lots and lots of people have their best jewels copied in paste, so they can wear them to the theatre—and the opera—and not have to worry.

But the second copy, that one was a work of genius! The stones were white topaz, not very valuable on their own, but so bright, so brilliant, that they could easily be taken for the real thing—and then I had the jeweler change the settings, so the diamonds were set in the new setting, and the topazes in the old, which showed signs of a century of wear.

So I had three riviere necklaces—one obvious fake, one undetectable copy, and one genuine article. I was so proud of myself! I wondered if that was how Erik felt, all the time.

I took apart the necklace of real diamonds, link by link, and I sold them. I sold them all over France, from Paris to the French-Swiss border, to twenty-eight different jewelers, and I raised a hundred and eighty thousand francs.

A hundred and eighty thousand! Surely that would be enough to set Anne up for life, to ensure that Erik's child would never lack for anything—least of all maternal love. And it was. I don't regret that part, I never will regret it. It was the right thing to do, as much as if an angel had whispered the plan in my ear.

When Raoul returned, and met Rosalie for the first time, it was so, so marvelous! We weren't simply a married couple, we were a family.

Then one night, he asked me why I never wore the diamond riviere—the one that had the white topazes in it, secretly. I told him I didn't care for it, that I didn't think it suited me.

He said that was nonsense, everything I wore was only enhanced by my beauty—such pretty things he used to say!

I said that if it pleased him, of course I would wear it, but there seemed to me to be much more valuable and nicer pieces in the de Chagny collection.

And then he told me that there was no more treasured piece in all the world, because it was the gift of the Queen—and my guilt was multiplied a thousand times over.

So when it was stolen, I privately rejoiced—until the police said they would comb the world to find it, and all the rest of the jewelry. There have been newspaper men and artists coming by at all hours, to get descriptions of the pieces, and to make drawings of them. Every single detail has appeared in the newspapers—the history, the value, accurate drawings.

They even say they will hire private detectives to search for it.

I hope they can't find it. I pray they don't find it.

Because I don't know what I shall do if it turns up. The insurance company will insist on having it examined and appraised—and when it turns out to be false—!

It will mean the end of everything for me.