her a crappy hand, but not ready to fold, fighting every day to survive.
Leila wrote the Giaour a letter knowing he would never receive it. She wrote a letter to find her truth. To find some answers for herself.
Without thinking too much about it, I open a blank email.
To: Leila ???
From: Khayyam Maquet
Subject: What would you do?
Dear Leila,
I don’t believe much in fate, but I’ve been feeling all along like I was the one meant to find you. That maybe your words were meant for me to unearth over 150 years after you wrote them.
You couldn’t have known that your story would reach through time to speak to me. And maybe I’m not the only one they’re supposed to speak to? Did you want your story untold because while you were alive it was too much to bear—the loss, the scrutiny it would bring, the notoriety? Were you afraid? My first instinct was to find you, then defend you, to fight for what you wanted—for your secret to be kept.
I could be wrong. Perhaps after all these years, the world needs your story. You couldn’t—wouldn’t—share it in your time, but maybe I’m meant to share your words in mine. Isn’t that how history works? Isn’t that how we learn? This is one thing women can do for one another—amplify the voices of our sisters that were silenced because the world told them their stories didn’t matter. Maybe it’s my job to make some space on the shelves for your story, Leila, because you deserve to be the protagonist in your own life. Every girl deserves to be. If you’d lived in a different time, you could have made a different choice because you would have had more fates to choose from, because you would have had a choice at all.
Maybe you never imagined that your life could change the world, but it’s already changed mine. Thank you for the gift of your story.
Love,
Khayyam
I stare at my screen and save the letter in my drafts. Men tried to make Leila’s story their own for her entire life. I won’t let them own her legacy, too. Dammit. I have to go to the Chateau.
It was almost too easy to get here. It should’ve been an epic journey—a quest where I battled beasts or villains to find a treasure. But it was a train ride. A swipe of an RER ticket. Maybe I didn’t need to fight monsters to get here, I only needed to fight myself to come face-to-face with the tall, wrought-iron gates of the Chateau de Monte-Cristo.
They’re locked.
A sign reads: fermé lundi. Closed Mondays.
This isn’t dramatic as much as totally absentminded on my part—a lot of French museums are closed on Mondays. Should’ve googled it.
Sigh.
I take out my phone and text Alexandre: I’m outside the gates. He’ll understand. Of course he will. Since he’s a member of the there are no rules, only suggestions school of life, I’m sure he figured out some way to charm or parkour his way into the museum.
A moment later, he’s ambling down the wide gravel path, a white hoodie pulled up over his head, slightly obscuring his expression.
“Did you break in here, too?” I ask, trying to cut the tension with the kind of small talk perfected by dads the world over. Wow. I’m only one step removed from the classic Chicago conversation starters: How ’bout them Cubs (or, Sox, depending on the neighborhood)? Or, can you believe this weather?
“No.” Alexandre tries to muster a smile as he approaches the iron bars. “My family can come and go as we please. It’s in the charter agreement with the Foundation.”
“Of course it is.” I manage a small smile in return.
He steps closer, grasping one of the poles separating us. “I’m sorry for the horrible things I said yesterday. I was only thinking about my family—and this place,” he says, gesturing to the grounds behind him. “I didn’t consider your feelings. Didn’t want to acknowledge that you were right to question what we’re doing.”
I step closer to the gate