AN: Thank you so much for all the reviews!

Three years later (December 1917)

"Where is your mother?"

"She went upstairs."

"I stayed behind for less than five minutes and she just leaves."

"Papa, she is tired."

"Maybe if she worked less"

"Papa, please. She has a lot do."

Her father stops talking now and leaves too, but she knows that it still bothers him. Cora took over the running of the convalescent home two years ago and she has the feeling that her parents' marriage has taken a down turn because of it. It didn't happen right away, but for the past few months it seemed to her as if her mother sometimes forgot that her father existed. She has to smile at that thought despite herself and the gravity of it. She started to think of Cora as her mother over a year ago, when Matthew had come home on leave for a few days and he woke up screaming two nights in a row. She begged him to tell her what he had dreamed of and he told her about the horrors of the war. And while it certainly had helped Matthew to deal with all of it, it made her life much more difficult, because now she couldn't stop herself from imagining Matthew in the trenches, being attacked, his life in danger every single day. It had almost made her fall apart, she cried for days on end and refused to eat, she shut her father out of her room, but eventually Cora had come to her and talked to her. She had been so kind and gentle and told her about how she felt during the Boer War, how afraid she was for Sam now, that she too kept imagining Sam and Matthew dead on the ground, even if she tried not to think about it. Mary then broke down completely and Cora held her and let her cry on her shoulders and then, without Mary having to ask for it, promised that she wouldn't tell a soul about Mary's reaction.

"Not even Papa?"

"No. Not unless you want me to tell him. But I thought that it would make you uncomfortable if he knew." Cora was right of course, she didn't want her father to know how she truly felt, it would worry him too much.

"No. Papa has worried enough about me for a lifetime."

"Mary, parents always worry about their children, that will never stop. Your Papa is always worried about you and so am I."

"Do you really worry about me?"

"Of course I do."

"Why?" She knew why, but she needed to hear it.

"Because I love you. I know you don't like to hear it and I am not expecting you to ever say something like that to me, but I do." Cora squeezed her hand then and made to leave. "If you need anything Mary, anything at all, come to me please," Cora said and then opened the door.

"Mama?" She was surprised by her own voice but when Cora turned around and smiled at her, she knew that would never regret saying it. "Thank you. For being there for me."

"You are welcome my darling girl," Cora answered and then left. They never mentioned that conversation again, she is sure that Cora knew that she would feel very uncomfortable talking about it and so she just let it rest. But she thought of Cora as her mother from that day on and it has made her happy, even though she sometimes thinks that that is silly because she is an adult.

Her father never commented on her calling Cora 'Mama', she supposes that her mother either talked to her father about it or that her father just knew how she felt and never questioned it.

"Mary?" It is Lilly's voice that brings her back to the present.

"Sorry. I got lost in my thoughts."

"Do you think we should do something?"

"About what?"

"Mama and Papa?" Despite herself, she has to smile at this too. Once she started to call Cora 'Mama', Lilly had started to call her father 'Papa', without his permission. He almost choked on his drink when Lilly did it for the first time and Lilly nonchalantly said "Sorry. I just thought it was easier. It all gets so confusing, with who is calling whom what. And you are my father-in-law, in a way at least. So I just thought it would be alright. But if it bothers you, I won't do it again."

"No, no don't worry. I was just a little surprised," her father replied and then patted Lilly's hand.

"That's settled then," Lily said and returned to her dinner.

"Mary" Lilly says again.

"I am not sure if we should do something. Or rather I wouldn't know what we could do."

"Give them a few days to themselves. We could handle everything by ourselves for a few days, don't you think?"

"Just you and I?"

"Yes."

"You are always so self-confident."

"Well, I snatched up a duke when I was sixteen. I should be self-confident." If she didn't know Lilly as well as she does, she'd be indignant on Sam's behalf now, but Lilly is laughing herself silly at this. Lilly certainly did not snatch up a duke, she fell in love with one and he fell in love with her.

"I suppose we could try."

"I think we should. And I think we should tell them to go away. If they stayed here, Mama would just work regardless."

"Where could they go?"

"I'll ask if that cottage on Sam's estate is still in a good condition." She still can't imagine her father spending two or three days every week in a small cottage with just two servants, but she also thinks that it is quite romantic and maybe returning there will actually help her parents find their way to each other again.

"Do you think he went to Mama now?"

"I doubt it. I am sure he wanted to check on Julie. She keeps having nightmares. Some of those soldiers have told her stories about the war, but she is too young to deal with them. I can hardly deal with them. And she knows that she has got brothers at war. She may hardly know those brothers, but they do write to her and she has met them. Maybe we should ask the soldiers to not tell her gruesome stories about the war."

"Yes."

"Has his lordship gone to bed already?" Mary has to bite her tongue to not ask that maid why she cares, but she supposes that Bates asked about it.

"Maybe. He will ring for Bates himself."

"I'll take the glasses then."

"Yes, thank you Jane." Lilly is friendlier than her, she wasn't even sure about the name of that maid.

"What's it to her whether Papa has gone to bed?"

"He wrote a letter of recommendation for her son."

"Why?"

"Because he is nice."

"Too nice if you ask me. He is playing with fire."

"Mary, this is not some sort of dirty romance novel." She hopes that Lilly is right, but it strikes her as odd that her father would write a letter or recommendation for a boy he had never met. But then again, her father is the nicest person she knows, besides Cora maybe.

"Let's hope not."

"Mary, don't you trust your father?"

"I do trust him. But he is bound to do something stupid or foolish soon and I just hope that it will be getting very drunk because then we could just help him deal with the hangover. Should he however start something with that maid"

"Mary, he did have an affair during his first marriage, but it was with Mama, the woman he loved. He still loves her, there is no doubt about it."

"I think he is starving for affection."

"Maybe we should talk to Mama before we send them on their way. Maybe we should tell her that we think that she spends too little time with him."

"Yes. We should. On a different note, I've had a letter from Sam. He says that he and Matthew are doing well. They will come home for Julie's birthday."

"I wonder how they managed that."

"I don't know, but they can both be rather persuasive."

Later when she is in her room, she wonders if she shouldn't talk to her father. She trusts him but she really does think that he is bound to do something very stupid and if he did something to ruin his marriage, he would regret it forever. She knows her father loves her mother, he loves her with all his heart and that is why her mother's seeming indifference to him hurts him so much. She knows that her mother isn't indifferent towards her father, she loves him just as much as he loves her, but she has gotten carried away by her work. Maybe she should talk to her mother too. Or maybe Lilly should do that, because she is much more open when it comes to those matters. She admires Lilly for her directness, it sometimes leaves her staring at her, but she often wishes she could talk about certain things as easily as her sister can. Of course Lilly isn't really her sister, but Cora isn't really her mother and neither Cora nor her father are a parent of Lilly's but still, she thinks of Lilly as her sister. They spent a lot of time together, they worry about the same things, and sometimes they even share a room, if one of them can't sleep because of the war. If there is one good thing that has ever come out of this war, then it is the family she has found during it. She would never have spent as much time with Cora, or her sister and father for that matter, if Matthew was home and they would always be running between Downton and London. Neither would she have spent as much time with Lilly, Lilly wouldn't live at the Abbey, she and Sam would live on their own estate. Sam writes to her regularly, in his first letter to her, he told her that he thought that as they were now brother and sister, he thought that they should get to know each other better. She thought that he was probably right and so she had replied to him and over the course of the last few years, she realized that she likes Sam quite a lot. And as he is the brother of her little sister, she has started to think of Sam as her brother too. Matthew told her several times that he would go mad without Sam to keep him grounded in the trenches and she thinks that some sort of brotherly bond has been formed between them as well.

They all love Julie to pieces and she is actually looking forward to being responsible for her little sister when they sent their parents away for a few days. Julie is such an engaging, bright child. She asks the most outrageous questions, she has already asked several times where babies come from and refuses to believe that they are brought by a stork.

"A stork can't carry a baby. And where would the stork get the baby?" she argued. Her father had laughed himself silly at that comment and later told her that she had argued the exact same way.

She thinks that she and Lilly should think about to do something special with their little sister when their parents are gone. When she falls asleep, she dreams of a better world.

She groans when the alarm rings and turns around because for just a minute she wants to be held by her husband before her maid will come and help her prepare for the day. But as has happened more often than not within the past few months, Robert isn't in bed with her. She is sure he is still asleep in his own room. She doesn't know what happened, but for some reason they have begun to sleep apart. She usually goes to bed before him, but it has often been that way and he used to join her anyways. Sometimes he would even wake her up again and they would talk or do other things. They haven't done 'other things' for weeks on end now, she is too tired at night, Robert still asleep in the morning and they hardly see each other during the day, although she has no idea what Robert could be doing all day long.

They agreed to turn the Abbey into a convalescent home two years ago and have lived with sick soldiers ever since then. She is running the house, together with Isobel, or at least she used to run it with Isobel, now she is doing so alone, because she and Isobel got into a fight and Matthew's mother left. For some reason Robert went mad at her for that, although what she argued for was to not change too much of the family's daily routine, something that should have pleased Robert. But maybe Robert had just been looking for a way to argue with her, it seems to be his favorite pastime these days. But whatever else could he be doing? He only sits around brooding and reading the newspaper. He never helps her, he never asks if there was anything he could help her with, he never asks if there is anything he could do for her. He used to cater to her every need, he used to cherish her, but now it feels as if she wasn't more than the woman who runs his house to him. This thought makes her mad, in fact it makes her so mad that she decides to wake Robert and tell him that it bothers her to no end that he only ever sits around and still doesn't think it necessary to spend some time with her in the evenings. It wouldn't kill him if he went upstairs with her at least from time to time. So she walks over to his room and without knocking opens the door and switches on the light. She regrets having done that the moment she looks at his bed because Robert isn't sleeping by himself.