“A fresh start is exactly what we need,” he said. “Here, away from the past. A new life together as we build toward what I have always promised you.” He put his arm around me and drew me close. “You can paint. I can resume studying. We will have seclusion and peace. Enough time that I can correct the failures of the past.”

I, too, was hopeful. I had arranged the marriage for a speedy confrontation with the monster. But as we entered the waters of Lake Como, all my childhood vulnerability, fragility, and fierceness fell on my shoulders like the light misting of rain we were under. It coated everything, quickly soaking me through.

I was not yet ready to face the monster. I would accept this respite and try to sort through who, exactly, I was as Elizabeth Frankenstein on the shore of Lake Como.

—

The interior of the villa—as familiar to me as a long-ago dream—was cloaked in white cloth and dust, everything shrouded as if for burial. I wandered through it in a daze. I touched various objects in hopes of sparking some memory, some concrete connection to this life that had been restored to me.

I felt nothing.

Victor left me in a bedroom while he explored the rest of the villa, doubtless looking for a library. In the morning, we would go into town to find a woman to hire as cook and housekeeper until we knew what my finances were and how much help we would need.

I wondered if any of the people I found in town would be one of my long-lost foster siblings. I would be certain to hire an old woman. I did not need to fear my family here. I was not their victim anymore; I was a married woman. I owed them no kindnesses and would deny any claims made on me.

I stood at the window, watching the sunset break through the dissipating rain clouds for one brilliant orange farewell to my wedding day. I had planned on this day’s being one of vengeance and fire. The monster had planned the same. But I was not where I was supposed to be, and thus nothing could disrupt our wedding night.

A new horror descended on me, though this was less a mortal terror and more a humiliating fear.

Victor was my husband. We had shared a bed countless nights growing up. But now we were man and wife: I, at seventeen, a woman; and he…

I dared not turn around. The bed behind me felt as though it were growing, taking up more and more of the room, lurking like the monster itself in anticipation of claiming me.