In Gothenburg—a clean, airy, wealthy town with canals running through the streets and endless rows of trees—Elias Backman welcomed us into his lively home, with a French wife and four little sons. Marguerite was back to her convivial self, surrounded by familiar things. Each night before supper we’d repair to a side table to eat bread and butter, cheese, cured salmon or pickled herring, and a glass of brandy, always in the same order, same dishes, same Skål to our good health, as the Old Norse had done. I smiled and did my part, and at supper quizzed Backman about everything—the ship, the lawsuit, the Ellefsen family—but learned nothing new. He told me bluntly that I was a woman of observation because I asked men’s questions.

What I remember best is falling in love anew with my little girl. What an interesting creature she was, noticing everything, tirelessly curious. (How I envied her the magic of existence, seeing things for the first time.) Even when I fell into darkness, her smiles twined round my heart and stopped my self-pity. Seeing her frolic with the Backman children—how free she was, naturally kind, generous with hugs, happy to be tickled and tossed about, same as the boys—reinvigorated my belief that all children are the same if only they be treated so. But worry over her future slipped in, the oppressed state of her sex. Would she be forced to sacrifice her heart to her principles, or principles to her heart? I was determined to cultivate her finer feelings, but in lending blushes to the rose would I sharpen the thorns that would wound her—by unfolding her mind make her unfit for the world she’d have to live in?

I wondered if that was what I’d done to myself. It all swirled inside me, the rosy tint of morning, the flush on Fanny’s cheeks as she played, the remembrance of color rushing to my lover’s skin, and mine. My eyes glossed with tears. Why must all roads lead to Imlay?

When I told Backman I wanted to go to Strömstad to see the damaged ship for myself, he offered to accompany me but said that I should then go on by myself to Tønsberg to meet the judge in our case, and it would be best to leave Fanny behind. I hadn’t been away from her since her birth. The thought of it nearly gutted me. But worse, how could I ever have thought of parting from her forever? When I’d wanted to die, the cleaving felt necessary to save her. An unhappy mother was a cruelty she didn’t deserve. Now that I began to want to live again, I couldn’t bear being torn away.

“Please don’t leave us,” said Marguerite, the night before we left.