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The Silent Wish	By : LaurieBaker Category: M through R > The Phantom of the Opera > Het Views: 14629 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Phantom of the Opera, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Katherine Sorelli’s home was in an entire uproar...and she had no idea as to why.

The first sign of her guessing at the trouble was when Sophia arrived to visit her father in some sort of clandestine meeting. It was unlike her older daughter to visit the manor at all, particularly in order to partake in conversation with her father. For many years, those two had clashed heads and it had bothered Katherine for some time. Yet when Sophia left the sitting room and exited for her carriage, she looked as if she had been crying.

For some time now, Katherine had been at a loss of how to handle her family, particularly Luciano and Sophia who were so aggressive and strong-willed. When she had fallen in love with and married Luciano so many years ago, she had thought that she would escape the tempest of a home in constant turmoil. With her distant father and overbearing mother, the family squabbles during her childhood were constant. As an only child, she had no sibling to share her troubles with. So when a charming Italian named Luciano Sorelli asked her for one dance after another during the first ball she had ever attended, Katherine was swept off of her feet at once. Indeed, she had reveled in all of the attention and eagerly accepted his marriage proposal only a few weeks later. Little did she know that eventually she would be caught up in an entirely new family with just as many conflicts.

Not that she regretted her marriage to Luciano. He had always been a passionate lover, a doting father and a generous husband. Yet over the years, she had seen the changes. She knew that he had shady dealings with various mysterious men but did not concern herself with his activities as she knew nothing about finance or business. Also, she had seen him become more temperamental as the years passed. He had never struck her, but there were many days when a civil conversation with him was an impossibility. Adding his moods along with the hardship of raising two young girls, Katherine eventually began to withdraw into her own inner world.

Even though she was no longer the little tot trapped in a screaming match between her parents, she still bitterly hated heated arguments. And when she was caught up in the whirlwind of angry words, she learned early to lose herself in her own creativity. She began to write a lot...songs and stories and poems. Her best friends were imaginary characters who she could control and who would be her comforting company whenever she needed them. Over the years, she had continued to write. And she had even had a few of her stories secretly published under a pseudonym, earning herself a little extra spending cash. She did not dare ever let Luciano know of her silent passion as she was quite sure he would not approve of the sort of popular romances that she wrote. Yet, she was proud to know that her books had quite a following. And each success seemed to spur on another one.

No one would ever inquire too deeply when Katherine would spend hours at her writing desk. Luciano always thought she was writing correspondence. Sophia and Aurora were usually always playing together with their dolls. As they grew older, they would all start to do their separate activities. Luciano would play chess. Sophia would attend dance class. Aurora would sit outside in the grass and sketch. And she would drown herself in her make-believe world so intensely that sometimes her characters became more real to her than actual flesh-and-blood people.

Once again, Katherine was lost in her world of writing when Sophia stormed out. Shrugging it off as another nasty episode between father and daughter, she continued with her story, thoroughly enthralled with her tale of a young governess employed at a house of a dark handsome man who was rumored to have murdered his wife. Yet later that afternoon, when Aurora was escorted to her bedroom by Luciano’s valet, hysterically sobbing and screaming, Katherine knew that she had to put aside her writing for a little while to see just what sort of hell was being stirred up now.

Knocking softly on the door of the sitting room, Katherine entered to see Luciano gingerly picking up chess pieces from the floor, scowling foully as he did so.

“Whatever is the matter, Luciano?” she asked. “Has this entire house gone mad?”

At the sight of her, her husband gave her a small trace of a smile.

“My dear wife, you are a sight for sore eyes.”

“Do not avoid the issue,” Katherine warned, all too aware of her husband’s ability to evade her questions and charm her into bed, seducing her so thoroughly that she would forget everything else.

“Oh, our little girl is acting up again,” he shrugged, his smile widening. “Nothing for you to worry about, my dear. However, you may as well know now that the wedding date has changed. Little Aurora is to be married tonight.”

“What!? Luciano, you can’t be serious!”

“I assure you that I am. Obviously, under the circumstances, this will not be the big affair we were planning for.”

Katherine felt distraught. There could only be one reason for such haste.

“She is with child?”

“Dear Lord, no!” Luciano laughed uproariously. But then his expression sobered and turned to one of dismay. “At least, I hope not.”

Katherine nearly laughed at his stricken expression. He had never looked so pale ever before.

“Yet she must have done something unseemly to create this haste?”

Luciano merely shook his head.

There was such an unreality to this entire discussion that Katherine felt as if she were in one of her own penny gothic romances. Aurora was a good girl. She always had been. Hardly even had she been any trouble while growing up. The very thought of her doing anything like becoming an unwed mother was simply inconceivable. And yet, Katherine had to face the fact that Aurora was a young woman now, no longer a child. And as such, she was old enough now to become prone to a woman’s desires.

Katherine remembered her own feelings at Aurora’s age. Her engagement to Luciano had been interminably long. She seemed to live off of his affection when he would hold her hand or lovingly stroke her hair. Perhaps because she received so little of that affection at home from her parents. And then on their wedding night, she found that she quite enthusiastically enjoyed her husband’s naked body against her own. She had always heard that intercourse was a thing to be dreaded, but she found that she craved it. Even now, she often wished that Luciano would not be so caught up in the family business and would spend a little more time with her. If she, an old woman with two daughters, still yearned for intimacy, what must it be like for Aurora when every touch of a man’s hands was new to her?

For the first time, Katherine began to feel guilty about her obsession with her writing. She had been neglecting her daughter. Sophia had never seemed to need her much, always stubbornly doing her own thing, no matter what her mother advised. Yet Aurora had obviously gotten over her head somehow. To be honest, Katherine did not even understand what Aurora saw in the Baron. Out of all of her suitors, he had seemed the most cold. Also, there was something so unsettling about him. Even the few times that she had served him tea in the parlor, Katherine had felt his eyes burning into her figure. But she would hurriedly shrug off such musings as her creative author’s imagination. Surely her daughter’s fiancé would not be lewdly eyeing her mother’s breasts!

“I cannot believe that Aurora would act indecently with the Baron,” Katherine said, more to herself than to Luciano.

“I do not wish to discuss the matter further, “ Luciano said, brooking no arguments. “What is done is done. And the marriage will happen tomorrow.”

“But what was done?”

“I SAID I DO NOT WISH TO DISCUSS IT!”

Katherine flinched as he roared at her. Lord, how she hated it when he did that! And she also knew that any further attempts to get information out of her bear of a husband would prove fruitless. He would merely storm at her and start throwing things around, utterly destroying the furniture.

No, she would find out the truth in a subtler fashion.

“Very well,” she said. “I shall have to go to town to have alterations made to my dress. It seems to hang a bit loose on me these days.”

“Yes, my dear,” Luciano nodded, seeming relieved that she was leaving. “You do as you must.”

Yet Katherine did not go to town for alterations. She went to the Paris Opera House to visit Sophia. Her other daughter surely was involved in this uproar somehow. Things had been just fine until she had made her appearance this morning. Whatever was going on, Katherine meant to get to the bottom of it.

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Knocking on the door of Sophia’s dormitory room, Katherine steeled herself to put on a good show. Just pretend you’re one of your own characters, she said to herself.

When her daughter opened the door, she put on her best mask of maternal worry and dismay.

“Mother!” Sophia cried out in shock. “What are you doing here?”

Katherine was not surprised at Sophia’s bemusement. Because of the battles between Luciano and their daughter, Katherine seldom visited the Paris Opera House precisely because she did not want to set her husband off on a wild tangent about what a disreputable life Sophia was leading, being a common dancer and showing off her bare legs, etc., etc.

“I am sorry to have bothered you, Sophia,” she sniffled. “But your father is simply a tyrant today! And I am so concerned about Aurora. Oh, what a mess she is in now!”

With a concerned hug, Sophia invited her in, having her sit upon her untidily made bed.

“Oh, Mother,” she sighed. “I understand your grief. Isn’t it horrible?”

Sophia flung her arms out melodramatically.

“To have my own sister mixed up with the Phantom of the Opera! Oh, I am so glad that Philippe is dead so he does not know of my shame!”

Katherine had to bite the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood to keep from revealing her shock. She was not unfamiliar with the tale of the Phantom of the Opera. On the contrary, she had been obsessed with his story. She had collected several newspapers and periodicals, accounting the mysterious story of the deformed blackmailer and murderer who passed himself off as a ghost. He had even inspired a few of her more romantic dark brooding characters in her novels from time to time. She had even had a trap door with a hall of mirrors in one of her stories. To think that her daughter had spent time with such a legend actually made her envious and terrified all at once.

“Do you think she has...well, done things that she shouldn’t have...with the Phantom?”

“After the sorts of sounds I heard in the library last night, I have no doubt of it at all!” Sophia cried out dramatically. “Oh, how far she has fallen!”

For the first time, Katherine yearned to slap her oldest daughter across the face. Who did Sophia think she was fooling with her hypocrisy? Katherine was quite aware that her daughter had partaken in one love affair after another over the years, quite possibly doing things that she herself had never even heard of in the bedroom. But she forced herself to ignore her annoyance with Sophia and concentrate on Aurora.

“How did she come to meet such a nefarious person?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Mother,” Sophia shook her head. “It must have started when she was here attending one of my ballet performances. She would arrive with all sorts of different gentlemen...and they would leave alone. But I never dreamed that all that time...”

“So he must live here still?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Then Sophia’s eyes widened. “Oh, Mother, do you suppose that he will try to take his revenge once Aurora is married to the Baron? Dear God, he might try to kill me out of spite! He could cut a chandelier right down on my head during a pirouette turn! Do you think I should resign? But I love dancing here! I should so hate to leave!”

Katherine rose to leave, unable to tolerate Sophia’s self-absorption one moment longer.

Patting her daughter’s shoulder distractedly, Katherine said that she was simply becoming overwrought and must calm herself.

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After her visit with Sophia, Katherine wandered around the Paris Opera House in shock, still trying to come to terms with the knowledge of Aurora’s affair with the Phantom.

And she did not even know how to feel about it.

Certainly, Luciano’s and Sophia’s fears were justified. The man had to be quite insane to commit such crimes. To think of her daughter under the influence of such a man was horrifying. Yet to marry Aurora in a haste to the cold leering Baron von Rothsberg did not seem like such an ideal solution either.

Katherine found herself at the famed dressing room of Christine Daae. Curiously, she entered the room, glad to find no one inside. In one of her novels, she had used a trap-door mirror just like the one the Phantom used to abduct his love from the opera house. As she looked about the room, she saw it, remote in a corner. Looking at her own reflection, she moved towards the mirror in slow motion. What must it have been like to have been Christine when she entered through the door into a dark underground world of candles and music and insanity?

What had he been like? A gruesome monster? Or had he been more like one of her romantic storybook lords? Scarred and lonely, dying for love? And what would such a man do to her daughter?

She had to know.

With trembling fingers, she touched the edge of the mirror and pulled...
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The Silent Wish