“There are people who need me elsewhere.”
“We need you here.”
The words landed with devastating simplicity. Viola did not cry, did not raise her voice and did not employ any of the dramatic tactics that Thistle would have used in the same situation. She simply stated the truth, as she always did, and waited for Mel to respond.
Mel could not respond as her throat had closed around the words she might have said, the explanations and justifications and careful lies. She could only stand there, her hand on the trunk, her heart breaking in ways she had not allowed herself to imagine.
“Viola.” She made herself speak, made herself maintain the composure that had always been her armor.
“Sometimes adults have to make difficult decisions. Sometimes we have to leave places we cherish and the people we care about. It doesn’t mean we want to leave… It means circumstances require it.”
“What circumstances?”
“I can’t explain them to you. You’re too young to understand.”
“I understand more than you think.” Viola’s voice was still quiet, still controlled, but there was something new in it now. A determination that Mel had not heard before.
“I understand that Papa came back from London looking sad. I understand that you’ve been avoiding him since he returned. I understand that something happened that made you want to leave, and I don’t think it’s a family emergency at all.”
The assessment was remarkably accurate for a six-year-old. Viola had inherited her father’s eyes and her mother’s name, but she had developed, somehow, a perceptiveness that was entirely her own.
“You should go back to bed,” Mel said. “It’s early. You need your rest.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me why you’re really leaving.”
“Viola…”
“Miss Grace is leaving?”
The new voice came from the top of the stairs. Anna stood there in her own nightgown, her hair in the neat braid she insisted on wearing to bed, her expression caught between confusion and alarm. Behind her, rubbing sleep from her eyes, was Thistle, with Brutus the toad clutched against her chest like a talisman.
Mel’s heart, which she had thought could not break further, shattered into additional pieces.
“Girls,” she said, her voice carefully controlled.
“This is not, you should all be in bed. Mrs. Kemp will be wondering where you have gone.”
“Mrs. Kemp is asleep,” Anna said, descending the stairs like a child calculating her every move.
“We heard footsteps in the corridor. Thistle thought it might be a ghost. I thought it was more likely to be someone attempting to leave the house undetected.”
“You were correct.”
“I usually am.” Anna reached the bottom of the stairs and came to stand beside her sister, forming a united front.
“You’re leaving. Without saying goodbye. Without telling us why.”
“I was going to leave a letter.”
“A letter is not the same as a goodbye.” Anna’s voice carried the particular precision that characterised all her speech, but there was something underneath it now. Something that sounded almost like anger.
“You taught us that communication requires honesty and presence. You said that written words are no substitute for spoken ones when matters are important.”
“This is different.”
“How is it different?”
Mel did not have an answer. She could see, with terrible clarity, how this must look from their perspective: the governess who had promised never to leave, who had earned their trust through months of patient attention, attempting to slip away in the darkness without a word of explanation.
