15 August 1692, Monday
I must do something with my hands other than strangle the magistrates, the pock-faced constable, or anyone else involved in this unholy cacophony, so I write. I pace, I bang my injured fists into the wall, I lie on our bed, hugging the quilts where she sleeps hoping for some sense of her. I know she is alive, she is not really gone, not in the eternal sense, but she is not here and I cannot stand it. I cannot stand to be in my own skin.
Father has been staying with me. I know he says tis to help me settle everything, to help me prepare so that after we get Lizzie out of that Hellhole we can flee to New York, to England, to Wherever, but I know the truth—he is afeared for me. He is afeared I shall go mad and I may well just. I also know what he will not say. Thomas
