He did not call me a hero or accuse anyone of a crime that had not been established.

Later, alone in the kitchen, he apologized for the attention his family had brought to my mother.

“You aren’t responsible for what strangers do,” I told him.

“But you are responsible for how you protect the people around you.”

He nodded.

“Then I need to do better at that, too.”

PART 16: The Day Adelaide Walked Away

I left the mansion in early summer, not because I had stopped caring about Pearl but because the work had become inseparable from a household scandal that threatened to swallow my own life.