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It’s much easier to say this in the aftermath, but my brother was doomed to fail. Some men are simply too powerful for their own good, and it seems this unfortunate truth deeply affects those they love—to an even greater degree, for to love someone else is to care less about oneself. But it is the living who suffer the longest.
Whatever cold beings that determined the world’s course were certain I would live the rest of my days more alone than anything. My miserable family’s estates were never larger than when my footsteps alone trod the floors—but they were also never cleaner or so peaceful, a realization that had guilt curling around my heart before finally settling with the dust surrounding me.
The aftermath was premature—there were moments I was certain none of it had been real—yet Victor was a strong presence in my life for a large part of his own, and I’m confident the rest of my dear family would say the same. Perhaps I was too young to put the pieces together as it occurred, but perhaps not—Elizabeth and Henry and even my father, despite their constant worries, were well and truly in the dark—and to think about it for too long could send anyone into hysterics. I would know. What poor Justine would have done to comfort me, when she is one of the very souls that has left me so miserable!
Indeed, the constant marking of the calendar was the only thing keeping me from floating upward into the abyss and denouncing the world, down to the beautiful Geneva countryside that gladdened me for so long. There is nothing death does not infect.