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ther, his baby brother, and now the governess he had loved and trusted. I wished I could comfort him by insisting on her innocence once again, but would that have helped? He could either rage at the presumed betrayal by someone he trusted or despair at the betrayal of the entire world in failing to protect her in her innocence.
It was easier to rage than to despair.
“Where is Victor?”
“I do not care,” Ernest snapped, tears filling his eyes. Had I been like Justine, I would have rushed to him. Taken him in my arms and comforted him as a mother.
Had I been like Justine, would I, too, be dead?
I drifted away to leave Ernest to find his own path through grief. I certainly could not guide him, as my own grief trailed in my wake, threatening to rise and strangle me.
I found Victor in his bedroom. He was pacing, muttering to himself. Before he noticed me, he opened and shut and threw several books. He was agitated, his eyes rimmed in red and accented by dark circles.
“Victor?” I said.
He turned, jumping as though expecting attack.
“Elizabeth.” With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and attempted to release some of the tension I could still see throughout his body. He trembled, shaking out his hands. Then he opened his eyes and really looked at me. “I am sorry.”
We had not spoken since Justine’s execution. “I know.” And I did know. He alone remained steadfastly on my side, believing me about Justine’s innocence though he barely knew her. “Will you come with me today, to visit her grave?”
He flinched. “There is no grave.”
“What?”
“I offered them money. But she died a condemned murderess. They would not bury her in hallowed ground.”
My heart broke anew. I knew what such a thing would mean to Justine. She had lived in a constant effort to be right before God. She had even died because of it. “What did they do with the body?”
“It was burned. They would not give me the ashes.”
I closed my eyes and nodded, dropping this injustice into the sea of horrors already drowning me.
“I have been thinking,” he said. Then he ran his fingers through his hair. His eyes darted constantly to his window, either looking for something outside or yearning to be there himself. “But I cannot think here, in this house. I am going for a walk through the mountains. I may be gone a day or two. Please do not worry. I hope, in the majesty of their embrace, to find some clarity.”
I wanted him here to comfort me, but I did not know how to be comforted. So I nodded and let him pass by. He carried a leather satchel.
He did not smell like ink and paper.
* * *
—
Later that afternoon, I prowled around the exterior of the house, glaring up at it. I had offered this place to Justine as a sanctuary. It had betrayed her.
I had betrayed her.
A spray of violets was growing beneath Victor’s window. Justine had always loved violets. I stomped through the other plantings to get to them. Whether to tear them up or to admire them, I had not decided. But I paused when something caught my eye. Beneath Victor’s window were footprints. I slipped my own booted foot down into the depression in the mud.
The foot was easily twice the size of mine, larger than any I had seen before. There were no impressions of shoes or boots, but neither were there toes. I would have thought something had been dropped there, but the placement was exactly as though someone had been standing beneath his window, looking in as I was now.
They were footprints, but too large. Too large by far.
Monstrous.
I rushed back inside. Judge Frankenstein was wandering through the first floor. His shirttails were untucked, and his hair was sticking up on the back of his head. “Have you seen my pistol?” he asked. “I wanted to go shooting, and I cannot find it anywhere.”
Victor. The satchel he had carried with him out of the house.
