a/n: well, you probably didn't think you'd see me around again. I had vowed to never post a story before it was completed, but here I am again. I'm making no promises with this one—just trying to reignite my love of the written word. It's been too long.

FAUST
Ne permettrez-vous pas, ma belle demoiselle,qu'on vous offre le bras pour faire le chemin?

MARGUERITE
Non, monsieur! je ne suis demoiselle, ni belle,et je n'ai pas besoin qu'on me donne la main!

"You might, perhaps, consider returning home."

Christine knew she should offer some reply to her sister-in-law. Martine de Montoire had always, always been kind to her and she was owed at least common courtesy in return. But Christine's attention was lost to the great window that spanned nearly one side of the sitting room. It was early May, and the Loire Valley was in her glory. Beyond the immaculately kept lawns of Chateau d'Montoire Christine could just make out the flowering cherry trees. They hovered like gossamer pink clouds on the horizon. She longed to launch out of her chair and run into the orchard, to sit under one of those trees and let the blossoms tumble down over her.

"She's lost to the world again." This came from her other sister-in-law, Philomene. Her tone lacked Martine's gentleness and could not be ignored.

Christine pulled her gaze back to Raoul's older sisters and offered an apologetic half-smile, setting aside the forgotten book she was holding. She was finding the role of widow preoccupied with grief a very easy one to play. It came so very, very near the truth.

"It is such a lovely day," Martine said, "So easy to lose one's self in the sunshine."

"She'll have plenty of time to contemplate the great mysteries of life once she decides where she's to set up house," Philomene redirected the conversation back to the issue of the hour acidly.

Christine wondered if there was possibly anything new they could add to the topic. She thought they must have exhausted every possible way of stretching and straining the competence she had been left with. Not for the first time, Christine reflected on the fact that this would have been much more straightforward if she had a child. A daughter, even, but especially a son. A son to carry on the de Chagny name would have been entitled to more of the scanty de Chagny fortune. A de Chagny son and his mother would have been welcomed permanently into the homes of either of his aunts, for all they had their own establishments and growing and grown children to tend to.

She and Raoul had sometimes tortured themselves when he was on land, lying in the dark of their bedchamber and conjuring their imaginary children from moonlight. They would be fair-haired and blue-eyed, of course, with her perfectly straight nose and Raoul's finely curved cheeks.

Raoul, of course, would always be optimistic. You are nearly gone thirty, not fifty. Stranger things have happened! And then he would joke, at least I know my lady is faithful and true when I leave her for the sea. He joked frequently about things that really mattered to him. Humor was how he starved the demons that would otherwise devour him.

She missed that humor and the man who brought into her life, more keenly now than when any of his voyages had taken him far from her. She had always wished to have some little good-humored mirror-image of him to keep her company while he was away.

Not anymore, curiously enough. Yes, a child would have made Christine's future more straightforward. But not, perhaps, better.

"I have decided," Christine said. Her eyes traced a slow but constant path between the two sisters, gauging her audience. Philomene would require firmness of manner, a projection of confidence to make her forget that her primary concern was the Dignity of the Family. Martine needed to be told a story, a romance to overrule what she would see as very practical objections. And both needed to know—to feel—that Christine was not forgetting their brother, or all of the sacrifices his family had made for her.

"A few weeks ago," she began, helping herself to a cup of coffee from the low table before them, "I received a letter. It had been sent to our home in Le Herve, and had not been deemed urgent enough to be forwarded to me in a timely manner. It was, naturally, a letter of condolence. From a Monsieur Didier Moncharmin."

"Moncharmin," Martine repeated. "The name is a familiar one."

Philomene's face went stony. "One connected with the opera, if memory serves."

"Armand Moncharmin was one of the managers at the Garnier during my tenure there, yes," Christine said. "His health prevents him from being much involved with the daily business of the place, and so his nephew has overtaken many of his duties."

"And it was the nephew who wrote you," Philomene stated. "I imagine his uncle would have known better."

I don't believe you've ever imagined anything in your life, Christine thought. But that was an unkind thought and would have made for a counterproductive statement. "It often surprises people to learn that theater folk are often interested in looking out after their own."

"But you are not one of their own," Philomene was not responding as well to the confidence as Christine had hoped. A hissing she-cat could not have looked more contentious. "You barely had the beginnings of a career—which you relinquished utterly upon marrying my brother and becoming Countess. Properly so."

And yet, my performances are still spoken of a decade later. Gounod heard me and said no other soprano should ever attempt to touch Marguerite. And he told me—

Another unprofitable line of thought. And, oh, Philomene was up for a fight. It was not enough to mention that she had married Raoul, probably taking him away from some unknown heiress that could have better revived the family fortunes. No, Philomene had to bring up the countship, which had only been gained at the expense of Philippe. They were not quite twins, Philomene and Philippe, but you would have hardly have known that according to Raoul. Raoul had been the baby, and Martine had come somewhere in between. So for years and had just been Philomene and Philippe—and then Philippe died. One might even grow to suspect, if one spent enough time with the bereaved sister, that Philomene put the fault of Philippe's death squarely on Christine's shoulders.

There were times that Christine wondered if it was some kind of familial love that made Philomene reject her every attempt at independence, some sisterly desire to project and nurture. After so many years around family, it might have been natural to assume so. And then days like today—like most every day since Raoul had died—reminded Christine: no.

Christine did not need her sister-in-law to love her, or even to help her. But when Philomene wanted to, she could interfere on a grand scale and that was what Christine wanted to avoid.

"When I said home," Martine broke in, "I did not mean, well— what I did mean was perhaps Sweden. The pension might seem more generous if you set up house there."

Oh, Martine. She was a saucy woman of the world in company, who wore her middle-age deftly, all flirtatious winks and blind eyes. In the private sphere, however, Christine did not know if she had ever encountered a more ingenuous lady. She gave passing consideration to Martine's suggestion. It was a naïve one. Christine still remembered when she and Raoul had ended their frenzied flight from—him—from—that—from—Paris— from— in Stockholm. It was like stepping into a strange role without any chance of rehearsal, singing in a language she barely remembered. The words had felt strange and heavy on her tongue, as had the food, as had the weather, and the people, and the very sky.

Raoul had, of course, taken things in better stride.

The idea of returning there alone was appalling. She would sooner live in a shabby garret in Paris than a mansion in Stockholm.

Philomene at least agreed with that. "A foolish notion, Martine. But you—" she managed to round on Christine in her chair, looking like a prizefighter. "You cannot think of returning to that world."

All the world's a stage, Christine thought. And yes, she most certainly did think of returning to the stage. The young Moncharmin had thought of it, too, and was willing to bet quite a lot on the success of her tragedy. Aloud, she said: "I am in mourning. And will continue to be. Monsieur Moncharmin merely informed me that he was aware of several families of good breeding who were interested in having their daughters tutored." She took a sip of her coffee. "Including the August Vilaine. Helene has a pretty voice, as you know, and she is to marry Geoffrey Dollier."

This play showed some success. The Vilaines were related to Philomene's husband, and as such, undeniably the Right Sort of people.

"And what do you know about teaching?" Philomene kept up the fight, but Christine detected a little less fire in her voice.

Well, I had the best voice teacher in this world or the next… "I took a few students—privately, of course, my dear—when Raoul was away." She didn't need to play act the unexpected lump in her throat. She sipped her coffee to scorch it away. "He liked me to have something to occupy my time with."

"You are talking about working," Martine said, and she could not have sounded more scandalized if Christine had said she was taking up some other, older profession.

"I am talking about living within my means," Christine countered.

"And living is the crux of it," Philomene said. She was meditative now, an infinitely more promising attitude than her previous one. "No one, not even a family with the Vilaines' largesse, hires a live-in voice teacher." And you cannot live respectably on your own. Those were the words they were continually dancing around, and Christine wished they would just say them.

"No, indeed." They were coming out of the cantabile aria and into the cabaletta. Christine reached for a book she had abandoned earlier and pulled out one page of Monsieur Moncharmin's letter. She would let his words be her flourishes this time. If she didn't give in and overplay…

Philomene read the page and then handed it to Martine wordlessly. She read it quickly, and the smile returned to her face. Christine held her breath.

"Why, this does sound imminently suitable," Martine said, more to her sister than to Christine. "Don't you think?"

There was nothing Philomene could say against it—this offer of being the guest of a perfectly respectable widow of a perfectly respectable professor of the Conservatoire, in a perfectly respectable part of town for a perfectly respectable amount of time. "And what will you do, come September?"

In September, the new season of the Opera Garnier would start—and who knew what that might mean to Christine? She intended to be there to find out for herself

But for today, the Widow de Chagny knew how to say her lines. She knew how to placate her dead husband's family. She knew reply to Moncharmin. She knew how to pack her bags. And, even though it had been nearly a decade since she had done so, she knew how to get to Paris.