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That hope is dashed within minutes of my return to the house. I hear shouting as soon as I walk inside, and when I follow the noise upstairs, I find Nathan and Luann arguing with Sean. Sean has his hands up and is trying to placate the youngsters, both of whom are red-faced and crying. When Sean looks at me and frowns accusingly, there can be no misunderstanding what they're arguing about.

Luann sees me and shrieks, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get out of my fucking life!”

I’m too stunned to come up with a better response than, “Pardon?”

“Don’t act stupid,” she snaps. “My God , you’re like sixty years old! Grow up!”

“All right,” Sean says sternly. “That’s enough!”

“You’re not my dad!” she retorts, whirling on him.

“ Dad’s barely our dad these days,” Nathan adds bitterly.

“Well, he’s definitely not our dad, and he can’t tell us what to do.” She spins toward me. “And neither can you! You’re the fucking tutor ! Jesus Christ !”

“You can get your point across without that language,” I say, frustration overwhelming my guilt.

“Can I? Because you don’t seem to get it no matter what I do. It’s none of your business what happens between me and Kevin, none of your business what happens between us and our dad, none of your business what happens between us and our grandma, and none of your business what happens on the vineyard.”

“What exactly happened?” Sean interrupts. “I’m still not sure what you two are so angry about.”

“She went to Kevin’s school,” Nathan replies, frowning at me with his arms crossed.

“Like a fucking creep,” Luann adds. “Told him to get into a van and then tried to get him to confess to sabotaging the vineyard. Which he didn’t do, by the way.”

The look Sean gives me cuts me to my core. It’s the sort of look a tired parent would give a toddler after coming home to find that the toddler had spread peanut butter all over the carpet. “Is that true, Mary?”

Luann plants her hands on her hips and stares haughtily at me. “Go ahead, Mary. Tell your boyfriend that you were stalking my boyfriend.”

I gather my thoughts and reply in as steady a voice as I can, “I am concerned that Robert Cartwright is going to suffer for a crime he didn’t commit. I’m also very concerned that you and Kevin have been sabotaging—”

“We haven’t! You don’t know that!”

“You can deny it all you want, Luann, but I do know that, and it’s a very big problem.”

“How do you know that?” Nathan challenges. “Did you see it happen?”

“I overheard her talking to Kevin. They were discussing how they were going to cover up the crime.”

"Jesus Christ," Sean mutters.

“You’re a liar !” Luann shrieks.

Her eyes are huge with terror, and her face is pale rather than red-faced. I look at Sean, pleading with him to look at her and know that I’m telling the truth. Instead, he looks at me, still like a parent, this time like one learning from the police that his child has been caught vandalizing a school.

"You two could get seriously hurt!" I protest for Sean's sake as much as for Luann's. "You two could have hurt someone else. You could have gotten your grandmother killed, or your father, or any of the household staff. Or yourselves. The explosives you carried could have been mishandled and exploded."

“That’s not a very high risk,” Sean interrupts. “ANFO is very stable.”

“Is that important right now, Sean?” I snap.

He narrows his eyes and holds my gaze. “No, Mary. It isn’t.”

I feel my lower lip trembling. But I was only trying to help! I just wanted to put an end to all of this! It’s not fair!

I am keenly aware of how childish I sound, and that does nothing to improve my attitude right now. “Listen, this can all end if you and Kevin just come clean. You need to tell the truth. You acted irrationally because your parents were being unfair, and they were. You two should feel free to date each other regardless of your family history. You made a poor choice, but it’s nothing you should be punished for the rest of your life. You made a mistake, and you’ve learned your lesson. Can you honestly tell me that your parents will put you in jail?”

Luann leans forward, hands still on her hips. “Read my lips, Mary. We! Didn’t! Fucking! Do! Anything! ”

“That is enough shouting and swearing,” Sean says. “Unless you want the other servants to hear.”

“Oh my God, I love that you said that,” Luann replies. “The other what? What was that word?”

“Luann—”

“Oh, right. Servants . The other servants .” She snaps her eyes back to me. “Tutor me, servant. That’s what your job is. The rest is none of your business.”

“I told you before,” I counter. “Your safety is more important than anything. I won’t let you and Kevin run around with loaded guns just because you want to act out against an unfair rule.”

She grabs fistfuls of her hair and shakes her head. “Oh my God. It’s none of your business. It’s none of your business. It’s none of your business! It’s none of your fucking business !”

“I think we’re done for now,” Sean says. “Children, go to your rooms. Mary, you and I will go to our room and have a little talk.”

“Good idea,” Luann says. “You two go talk, and I will do whatever the fuck I want because you can’t tell me what to do.”

She stalks toward me, glaring fiercely at me as though daring me to stop her. I don’t. She stalks past me and descends the stairs. Nathan takes the time to shake his head disapprovingly at me and say, “Thanks for the help, Mary,” before following his sister.

The front door slams shut, and I stiffen, then turn to follow them.

“Leave it, Mary,” Sean calls.

“But—”

“Leave it.”

“But they’re going—”

“Mary, for the love of God, leave it!”

I stiffen when he raises his voice. This is only the second time he’s raised his voice to me. The first time he raised his voice was out of concern for my safety. This time is different.

“Inside the room!”

I feel an irrational urge to stalk defiantly down the stairs, but that would make me no better than the teenagers who’ve just done the exact same thing. I walk into the room instead, wiping tears from my eyes and preparing for the scolding to come.

When Sean closes the door behind me, I ask, “Where are Julian and Victoria?”

“They left for a board meeting. The company’s in the thick of it with the attacks on the vineyard, and it looks like Robert Cartwright is preparing a countersuit for defamation.”

His tone is calmer now, and for a moment, the irrationality returns, and I hope that I might get away without being scolded. I turn to him, and that hope vanishes immediately. The tired parent is there, but it’s the pity I see in his eyes that truly hurts.

He sighs and sits on the bed. He looks past me and takes a deep breath, which hurts like hell because I know he’s preparing for a frustrating argument with a grown woman acting like a child. But I’m right, damn it! I’m right !

“I think we should leave, Mary.”

I blink. I expected an argument, but I didn’t expect it to start this way. “What?”

“I think we… No, forget that. I know we should leave. We should leave.”

“Leave… what? Leave the house?”

“The house, the island, the family: all of it. We should leave and allow them to pick up the pieces without us here to rip them apart again.”

My stomach turns. He’s using the word us, but it’s very clear that he means me. “But… what about them? What about the children?”

“Oh Christ, Mary,” he says, rubbing his face and looking past me again. When he meets my eyes, the pity is stronger, and I hate it so much I want to scream. “We’re not helping the children.”

“Don’t say we if you mean me,” I snap.

He shows some emotion at that. “Well, I can’t bloody talk to you straight, can I? You’re going to get all pissy and hurt and tell me that you did all of this for the children, and I just can’t understand, and you can’t leave mysteries unsolved, and you need to speak for the people who can’t speak for themselves, and so forth and so on, and you know what? Maybe that’s all true. But you’re wrong. This time, you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not !” I stamp my foot when I say that, and when I realize what I’ve done, heat floods my cheeks. “I’m not wrong. Luann and Kevin are behind this, and they need to be honest before an innocent man gets hurt—”

“Robert’s richer than God, Mary. He’s not going to be hurt. There’s going to be a highly publicized scandal, and the two of them are going to come to an agreement and then probably never talk to each other again. Which is for the best. The children are going to stop acting out because nearly burning down their own house is much more frightening than their nosy tutor threatening to tell on them. Julian is going to take the children away from their grandmother, and Victoria is going to be able to focus on her pet project vineyard without her family and her old flame getting in the way. They’re going to move on, and they’re going to have an easier time doing it without you.”

Once more, my stomach turns. I actually sink down into a chair. “Sean, why are you talking to me like this? You never talk to me like this.”

Sean chuckles in frustration and gives me a tight smile. “I’m sorry, Mary. This isn’t the right time for me to be gentle with you. I’ll be as gentle as I can, but the main point that needs to get across is that you need to leave this house before nightfall. Your presence here is damaging this family, and it’s not doing you any favors either.”

My breathing quickens, and my hands start to tremble. These are the beginning symptoms of a panic attack, but I refuse to succumb to one of those now. “Someone needs to help them.”

"No, Mary. They need to figure it out on their own. And you need to accept that sometimes things don't get figured out. Sometimes people hurt, and trying to stop that hurt only makes it worse. Sometimes bad things happen, and no one gets punished for them. Sometimes people cheat and get away with it. Sometimes families split up. Sometimes bad things happen, and there's nothing you can do to stop it or fix it. It's a shite truth, but it's a truth."

My whole body is trembling now. I look up at him, pleading silently for him to understand, for him to see that I can’t do that. I can’t give up. It’s not right. It’s not fair .

I see no understanding in his eyes. No agreement. Sympathy, but no agreement. “Start packing,” he says. “I’ll call Julian and let him know that we’re leaving.”

The last of my strength leaves me. I don’t have the energy to do more than nod as tears stream silently down my cheeks.