When I woke Raoul was sober and packing our things to go back to our new home. Well it was only my new home. It had been the home that Raoul had grown up in and had inherited when his parents died earlier that year. I sat up in bed and he didn't seem to notice my existence as he kept packing up his things. I got out of bed to take a bath. When I finished I walked out of the bathroom expecting Raoul to be down at the bar. But he was sitting on the bed staring at me.
"So where were you yesterday?" His words were harsh and accusing. He had an empty glass in his hand and the smell of alcohol radiated from his words.
"I went to visit Meg. She wasn't at our wedding and I wanted to see her." He accepted my excuse half-heartedly. He got off the bed and grabbed our bags and left the room, making sure to leave the door to slam shut. I stood in the room lonely and a little dazed. My life was starting so quickly. I wanted nothing more than to just go back to the opera house and sink into my bed there and watch time roll backwards to the days when it was only my angel and me. I wiped the single tear that snuck out of my eye and slipped out of the room down to the carriage waiting for me. Raoul refused to make eye contact with me the entire trip. It was then I finally decided Erik would be nothing to me but a distant phantom of a memory and that my future I would devote to my new husband and his happiness.
We got to the house and Raoul helped me out of the carriage. I kissed him delicately on the cheek and felt all of his bitterness drain away. He must have sensed my distance the past two days. He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him. I could love him and make him happy I could. Just love. Just Live. Just give what I could live and take what little I deserved. We walked up the front steps into our new home. But it was no home it was a mansion. The front door had an archway with sculptures in the brick as magnificent as the Opera Populaire. He led me through the house to our bedroom. I unpacked all of the belongings I brought from my small apartment near the opera house. He placed them around our room in a way that pleased him. The room made me feel small and out of place. It felt as though it was his room and he was only making space for me instead of making it our place.
At dinner that night we sat at opposite ends of the large table. The entire house felt so empty and deserted. It was a big difference from the overcrowded, chaotic opera house. He left me after dinner so he could go out gambling. I quickly made friends with the house servants. I was afraid I would suffocate in the loneliness that crowded the atmosphere of the house. It was too grand and large for people to live in. I should have been a museum, a place only to go to look. I thought homes were meant to be small and full of love and weddings to be small and full of those that loved you and it was meant to be sincere and full of tears of joy. I had a feeling that this life wasn't going to be like that at all. I quickly changed into a night gown and sat in the bathroom brushing my hair quietly singing to myself.
I missed singing so much. Singing had once been a thing that represented freedom and filled me with joy and brought up my spirits. I hadn't sung since the night of Don Juan Triumphant. I looked into the mirror as I finished the sung I was singing almost hoping to see his face. NO! He was to only be the phantom of the opera. He would be nothing more than that to me. He would no longer have my love or a name. He would no longer have a face just a dark silhouette that passed through the shadows. I walked to the bedroom shaking his memory out of my head. I slipped under the covers and quickly fell asleep.
I was walking around in circles and the room was spinning around me. I was looking for someone. People in weird costumes swirled past me. I was getting so dizzy. Suddenly there was a loud bang and I fell and kept falling down a tunnel of darkness reaching out to touch someone, but not just anyone. The spinning stopped along with my falling and a hand reached out pulling me from the darkness. My vision was blocked out and all I could see was light. I was an overabundance of light and it hurt my eyes. But I heard two distinct voices.