Only great love, as I was told in a lifetime so long ago, can journey beyond the shores of fate.
~~~
Erik re-read the words he had scrawled in his journal. His handwriting was childlike, marred by tremors that came with every cough.
It was Zareh, the shah’s chief of police … the daroga … who had spoken those words to him. For many years, he had thought they referred to Christine. Now he knew better.
It was Claire … and through her, Veronique … who would continue his journey even after he was gone. It was not likely to be much longer, he thought. He had long ago stopped hiding the blood-spattered handkerchiefs into which he coughed.
Christine. How many years had it been? That last time he saw her, at the Royal Opera in London’s Covent Garden, seemed a lifetime ago. It was on that night that he realized that the love … no, the obsession … he had carried for her was long-gone. That Claire was all he had sought.
Erik closed the book, cleaned his pen, and put the writing materials away. With an effort, he stood from his desk, waiting for the cough that, miraculously, did not come.
He made his way into the parlor of the little Provencal farm house that he and Claire called home. She was reading to Veronique and he joined them on the divan so that he, too, could listen to the fairy story in which everyone lived happily ever after.
What a beautiful dream that was.