Chapter Text
In another universe, the newspapers might have been headlined, VICOMTE RETURNS TO FRANCE ALONE or perhaps, VICOMTESSE MURDERED IN AMERICA or even, if the fates were kinder and didn't have such twisted senses of humor, MR. Y STEALS DIVA FROM VISCOUNT HUSBAND .
However, in this universe, they read none of those things.
Their headlines are other stories, ones I shan't bore you with as they have nothing to do with this curious tale.
For in this tale, Madame la Vicomtesse Christine de Chagny does not run away with the mysterious Mr. Y.
She is not shot by one Mademoiselle Marguerite Giry, although perhaps that small piece of metal was much too close to her important organs for comfort.
She does not die on the pier.
She isn't held in her lover's arms, begging for his kiss once more.
As one might speculate would have happened, had that bullet been even two inches to the left.
Oh no, she makes it out of this story very much alive.
Very much alive indeed.
For you see, it is she who would recount this story to myself—a young and curious author, at the time—many years past.
By that time, her hair had become silver, and her face wrinkled, but she remained kind, compassionate, and beautiful as ever.
In old age, she and her husband, Monsieur le Vicomte Raoul de Chagny, relocated to a small countryside estate in France, one which I managed to find the whereabouts of only after many days of searching and coming up empty.
She spoke to me about everything, and perhaps only because I was young and naive. A very slight writer, freckled face, still doe-eyed, no published stories as of yet.
Others, greater reporters than I, have tried to get the story from her, asking then harassing then sometimes even spreading rumors.
I have assured her I mean to do no such thing with this story.
Everything here is her own account, aside from the details which I had to do painstaking research to find.
I have spoken to many people, all of whom were either present at the time in question, or were told the stories by someone who was.
I have tried to be mindful of this—especially in the case of the latter—but la Vicomtesse has been with me every step of the way, and were there anything she did not approve of, she did not voice her concerns otherwise I would have removed it.
Now, that has been settled, and I may begin the true tale of what happened on Coney Island.