Victor set the book down with a sigh. “I want you to rest. I believe you that Justine is innocent. I will investigate this and haunt the courts until they free her. Her trial began this morning. Now that you are awake, I will return to it.”

“This morning!” I pushed up, but my head swam. I could not stand, as the room swayed around me. Victor gently but firmly guided me back down to the bed.

“You are in no state to attend. You could injure yourself further.”

“But I must testify on her behalf.”

He sat at the desk and pulled out a quill, dipping it in my inkwell. “Tell me what you wish to say, and I will present it as character evidence.”

It would be better if I were there in person. I could picture exactly how I would look testifying: My golden hair like a halo around my head. I would wear white. I would cry and smile at exactly the right times. No one would be able to doubt me.

But if I went as I was now, I would look crazed. Victor was right. I could not help her in this state.

So I poured out my heart for the letter. Justine was the kindest friend, the truest person. She had loved William as her own child from the moment she met him. Never had a governess cared so much about her charges or taken such delight in nurturing them. After the death of Madame Frankenstein, Justine had stepped into her place and provided William with the most compassionate surrogate imaginable.

“Oh, Victor,” I said, sadness competing with pain. “We have not even spoken of William yet. I am so sorry.”

He finished the letter and then carefully blotted the quill and set it down. “I am sorry he is dead. It is a waste, losing him so young. But it feels more like something that happened to someone else. I barely knew him.” He turned, searching my face for either my response or a clue to how his own should be shaped. “Is that wrong?”

I had guided him so much in how to react to things, how to shape his expressions, how to be sympathetic. But I had nothing to offer him now. “There is no wrong way to feel after something so violent and terrible,” I said. Of course Justine had been insensible. It was overwhelming, and so strong and big a feeling that it felt…unreal, in a way.

“Death touches us all in different ways,” I said finally. I closed my eyes, my head already aching so badly that I longed to fall back asleep. Victor was probably right. Perhaps a combination of the storm, my upset, and the blow to my head had lifted Victor’s gruesome drawing out of my memory and placed it, in terrifying size, in my mind. I had, after all, been plagued by nightmares my whole life.