The ghost. The vines on the worktable. The journal with its terrible diagram. The memory of being pulled inside M.'s dying body, of experiencing her terror as she clawed at that door with bloodied hands while something grew inside her throat.
Had it been real? Or had the laudanum painted hallucinations over reality, transforming an ordinary greenhouse into a chamber of horrors that existed only in my deteriorating mind?
I needed to know.
The thought consumed me, circling again and again until I could think of little else. I needed to return to that greenhouse to see it with clear eyes unclouded by drugs or pain or the haze of a ghost's memory overlaying my own perceptions.
I needed to prove to myself what he had done to her.
For now, however, it would have to wait.
Agnes sat across from me at the dining table, just the two of us again.
Dr. Ambrose was secluded in his study, still desperately attempting to salvage pages of his damaged journals after Hawthorne’s rampage. He had declined to join us for supper, and in the week that I had been forced to lie in bed, I had not seen him once.
I told myself I did not care, that his absence was a relief after everything that had happened and all the terrible secrets that were now starting to unravel.
But the lie sat bitter on my tongue.
Despite everything I knew and all the horrible things I suspected to be true, I could not put him out of my mind. He occupied my thoughts like a poison I simply refused to believe would harm me, so long as I only allowed myself one small taste.
I pushed the food around my plate, my appetite gone despite Agnes’s excellent cooking. The roasted pheasant and vegetables sat heavy and unappetizing before me, cooling in the candlelight while I moved them from one side of the plate to the other.
The silence stretched between us, comfortable in its familiarity but weighted with things unsaid. Questions I could no longer resist piled high in my throat, refusing to be swallowed any longer.
“Why did you not tell me about Hawthorne?” I asked, keeping my tone casual as I cut into meat I had no intention of eating.
Agnes looked up from her plate, though she did not directly meet my eyes. Her lips parted, a small sigh escaping. “What do you think would happen to Hawthorne if people found out about him?”
I hesitated, turning the answer over. I was a stranger, someone they had been uncertain of trusting. It made sense that they would withhold something so enormous from a person who had been in the house mere weeks. The secrecy stung regardless.
“I suppose I understand your reasoning,” I said. “But I deserved to know the truth, Agnes.”
She set her fork down and folded her hands in her lap with the weighted stillness of someone who had rehearsed this conversation many times without ever quite finding the right words to begin it.
“You’re right,” she said at last. “And I’m sorry for it. We should have told you sooner.”
“Were you there?” I asked. “When Hawthorne was created?”
Agnes’s chin dipped in acknowledgement. She reached for her wine glass, turning the stem between her fingers without drinking. “I was there for most of it. Not the earlier stages, of course. Dr. Ambrose and his wife began the research long before I understood what they were attempting. But when they assembled Hawthorne, yes. I was there. I helped them.”
“I do not understand,” I said. “How could you allow them to create something so—”
“Monstrous?” Agnes finished for me, a short huff of laughter escaping her. “Despite what happened in the greenhouse, he’s not evil. Dr. Ambrose’s wife loved him fiercely, and you may think it foolish of me to believe, but I think Hawthorne adored her too.”
The affection in her tone made my heart twist. The truth was, I understood why someone might love Hawthorne. Beneath his frightening exterior and aside from the single violent outburst I had witnessed, he was a gentle creature who simply loved plants, who tended them with a reverence I recognized as genuine. It made complete sense that a woman who had also loved them would have taken so fondly to him.
“Agnes,” I began carefully, watching her hands around the wine glass. “What happened to Dr. Ambrose’s wife?”
Her hands stilled entirely. She met my gaze for the first time since we had sat down, her eyes tired and honest in equal measure. “I wish I could tell you, Camellia, truly I do. But that is not mine to tell.”
“Then whose is it?”
“Dr. Ambrose’s,” she said, her tone firm beneath its gentleness. “It is his grief, dear. His to share or keep as he sees fit. I will not take that from him.”
I absorbed this, pressing my tongue to the back of my teeth. It did little to ease the suspicions turning in my mind, but I could not fault her reasoning.
“Did he love her?” The question spewed out.
