Morning Glory
He was meant to return home after graduation and graduation was close. It had been four years since he’d left Geneva at just fourteen. He was a different person now.
Victor’s memories of his family were brittle, but his duties to that place were still strong: His father sent money at the beginning of the month and a letter four times a year.
He expected to hear detailed information about Victor’s studies, presented him with interesting cases and details about the patients he handled at home.
Doctor Frankenstein was a heavily lauded scholar and a patriarch and he expected Victor to grow to be the same.
His mother, who he was not close to, wrote more often, talking to him about her hobbies and interesting gossip from her trips to town. Remarked on how well the farm was doing and the growth of his baby brother, the weather of the day.
But Victor awaited the letters from his dear Elizabeth the most. She spoke to him about her dreams and asked about his, and no one had ever done that before or since.
A not-sister and ward who came to live with them.
She had followed him into his father’s workspaces, helped his mother in the kitchen, ran with him in the fields and didn’t care much about the mud trailing up the hem of her dresses.
She knew him, more than anyone, she knew him and liked him in spite of it.
Real love can’t be built on letters alone, Victor was aware of that.
But if he must have a wife, he wanted it to be her.
He hadn’t spoken to her of his feelings yet, but there would be time.
She was determined to remain un-betrothed until Victor was back in Geneva, wanting for the family to be “complete again,” she said. Waiting for him, he hoped.
But there was terror in that, too, in the end.
The expectations Doctor Frankenstein had for him at fourteen would be stronger now that he was a man.
Patients would be looking to him for answers instead of assistance.
He had a brother he barely knew and a farm to care for, besides.
He had to make plans for his inheritance—as it would be considerable—but between his impending nuptials and building a household worthy of Elizabeth, it must be managed.
And Elizabeth, the last she’d seen of him was when they were children. He must strive to be the sort of man who stepped off that boat and onto dry land like a titan before her.
A man worthy of the letters he sent. But, as painful as it was to admit, Victor wasn’t sure if he would measure up.