Cora could count on one hand the number of times she'd slept beside her mother, the times so infrequent and so few that they stuck out in her mind, those memories a slightly different tint from the other shades of colors there. The last time of which had been in England, the night before she was to marry Robert. Robert. The night before she had become Robert's.

How did it feel like so long ago now? How did it feel like another lifetime?

Lying in the darkness beside Martha, Cora pulled the covers more tightly around herself. She brought them to her chin, and she rested them there. Her mother had only just fallen asleep, and Cora did not want to disturb her. She'd been so tired. Her mother had been so tired, and yet had such a difficult time finding rest, finding comfort. She had slept near Father for so long. It would be hard to fall asleep without him.

Cora frowned behind the beige sheet she now held at her lips. It was strange sleeping here, lying here where her father should have been. It was strange to sleep in her father's place. Flames from her parents' fireplace threw shadows that danced around the room, and Cora listened to the gentle crackle and insistent pops that filled the space. She let her eyes roam around the bedroom walls, watching the shadows, taking in the art and the portraits that filled years and years of her life, sitting on the floor watching her mother's maid finish her hair, curled into a chair with a blanket, Harold nearby, as their father read aloud from one of his books.

"Call me Ishmael..."

Breathing evenly, as if to push out the sound of his voice, she peered over the covers once again. Her sight took in the paintings of she and Harold that hung proudly above the mantel. How remarkable they were – both of them. How lifelike. How accurate. Cora blinked as she stared at them both, as she stared at the one of herself. It was well-done, she had admit, how the artist had captured the subtle and playful lopsidedness of her smile, the strong line of her jaw, the near-black darkness of her hair. She remembered having them done, her parents having them commissioned when she was just a bit younger - sixteen. But she hadn't paid them much mind after that. She hadn't cared to. But now, the longer she stared at them, the longer she looked at the artist's impression of her features – her nose, her lips, her eyes – and the more and more guilty she felt.

Had her father gone to bed with the thought of her, with the thought of his child an ocean away, on his mind? Did parents think of their children that way? Did her parents see the likeness of she and her brother and think of them every night, just before they turned down their lamps? Just before they blew out their candles? Did parents do that? For children certainly did not.

At least, Cora did not. Not for a long time now. She'd not thought of him in such a long time, and the realization of this hardened her guilt, and it felt heavy in her chest. It wasn't solely her father, she tried to assure herself, it was them both. She had thought less and less of her father and her mother. It wasn't that she loved them less, but perhaps...perhaps she missed them less. She was less lonely now, at Downton.

Robert began to share her bed every night four months ago. Before then she'd taken the time to write every night, just before she retired, before Robert would slip inside...be with her...and then slip out again. But since that had changed, since Robert did not simply slip in and then out again, since she now more often fell asleep with her hand touching his, she had stopped writing every night. She'd stopped writing every week. She wrote once a month, on the first, and to her mother, sending Father and Harold love at the closing. She'd not written a letter to her father. Not once. Not a single line directly to him, but suddenly the guilt felt less like guilt and more like anger. More like resentment.

For her father had never written her, either.

Her mind rested on that thought longer than she liked. Her mind rested on the hollowness of that, on the emptiness of it. For now she knew, Cora knew, that he never would.

Her father was gone. He was gone, and the last thing they'd ever truly said to one another was not kind. He had not been kind, and she had been deserving of it.

But to never write? Why? Why had he never written her? Why hadn't he when Mother had written those six weeks ago, informing her of his illness? Why, after she'd been married for three months, for six, for nine, hadn't he yet come to accept it and move past it? Why? Why couldn't he move past it? Had he not missed her?

Cora's breathing hitched in her chest.

He had to have missed her. If he loved her at all, like every parent should love his child, then he missed her. For heaven's sake! Cora missed the child she had only carried for thirteen weeks. A child she'd not seen, not held, not yet been able to protect, and the child was missed. How, then? How did he not feel the need to write to her?

Surprisingly, and seemingly without reason, the image of Robert came to mind. Of Robert among her family, his shoes kicked to the doorway. Of Robert sitting on the floor beneath GranMary, declining to recall again he and Cora's own private loss. Declining to cheapen what had been, refusing to exploit the few months of intimate preparations – the lists of names and happy disagreements on the best colors for the nursery – for what Cora believed to be nothing more than morbid curiosity.

She thought of Robert now, how, only a couple of doors away, he was lying peacefully in her bed, surrounded by all the things that had given her comfort as a girl. She thought of the way he slept so near her back at Downton, how he always, just before sleep claimed him, whispered Good night, my darling, Cora never managing to mutter her response. Her response of how she loved him. She couldn't. Though it had been said before, she couldn't say it now. She was waiting for him to say it now.

...and just like that, Cora's jaw went slack. She knew.

Cora knew.

Her father had been waiting for her. He had been waiting for her to write, for her to come the distance that he always came...but she did not.

Cora had never written to her father. She had never written him.

The frosty heaviness of this fact fell cold onto her chest, and in the bed lying next to her mother, Cora cried herself into a restless sleep.

She wasn't sure what had woken her, but woke her it had. Cora ran her hand over her face, it feeling strangely stiff from sleep, and looked to where her mother sat up beside her. She grinned up at Martha briefly, but devoid of any glee.

"Glad one of us can get some sleep."

Cora furrowed her brows and moved to lie flat on her back. Her mother's sleeping form from hours ago, bathed in flickering firelight, appeared in Cora's mind.

Martha spoke again. "If you snored a little louder it might help."

Cora let go of the breath she held. "Oh, Mother." She pulled herself up to sit beside her, and then studied her mother's features. Her blue eyes sagged with exhaustion, the corners of her mouth drooped sadly. Cora reached her hand slowly over, covering her mother's.

"Won't you try to eat something? Maybe some toast?" Robert's words from the morning before echoed from Cora's lips. She pressed her mouth at the realization, pausing momentarily at the stir behind her ribs. "Or...or perhaps just some coffee. Would you like for me to bring you up some coffee?"

Cora watched quietly as her mother's eyes roved over to her own, the blues of them so identical. Martha gave a small shrug, her mouth moving into what was almost a smile, but not quite even moving into what could be considered a grin. Cora took it as acceptance.

"Good," Cora forced a smile. She squeezed her mother's hand. "I'm glad. Really."

Martha rolled her eyes away from Cora and sunk again down into her bed, sighing.

Taking that as her cue to leave, Cora slid from the bed, letting her black skirts fall around her legs. She moved to the door, turning back once before leaving the room to look at her mother. Martha, who stared out toward the window, almost seemed a different person, but in one small morning, in one small complaint and in one small roll of her eyes, Cora could see that perhaps she'd not sink completely. Perhaps Martha would, in fact, swim. Father would want them all to swim.

She let this thought carry her down the dark hall. She let this thought provoke other thoughts, ones with similar lightness, and she studied them. She paused on the one of Robert. Of Robert remaining shoeless and in his same set of clothing, in respect for Father. Of Robert sleeping on her father's small couch, knowing she'd not wanted him to sleep near her, though she was sure he wished to. Of Robert offering to bring her up some toast, something she'd never seen him do in the year she'd lived with him. Servants brought up toasts, not heirs to an Earldom.

And just as Cora began to grow warmer, just as the hallway suddenly didn't seem so dark, she detected it. She heard the small murmur of voices, of women's voices and then, unmistakably, Robert's.

She slowed to a stop, and she looked attentively at the small natural light that came from her mother's upstairs sitting room, the door only slightly ajar. It flooded onto the dark green walls of the hall around her.

"...it just didn't seem right. It didn't seem right to risk."

Her features all fell into a solemn alertness. Robert. What...what was he saying?

"But how much of a risk did it pose, Robert, really? How far along was she when you first learned?"

Cora's eyes widened slightly. No. No, no, no. They weren't, Aunt Ruth and Robert….he wasn't...why? Why did they feel the need to discuss it?

"In her third month..."

"Then why?" And GranMary, too. GranMary.

"Because the doctor was sure she'd lose it...the baby..."

Cora's hand went to the wall, holding her, steadying her, her eyes drifted away from the light, away from the sound of their voices, but still hearing them nonetheless. Robert's voice, though quieter, persisted through the dark. It stung her ears.

"...she'd had complications...there'd been difficulties. I...I'm not sure…I could never...never bear to hear, but...he was certain that...that she would miscarry. He was surprised she'd gone for nearly four months."

No. Cora shook her head, her lungs heavy as stone. No. No.

"We thought it best to keep it from her. We thought perhaps it may help...but...then. Well." A pause. "She doesn't know. Still, she doesn't know."

She could hear her grandmother's voice, but could not make out the words. She could hear Aunt Ruth whispering, but she didn't care what she said. She didn't want to know what she said. She felt heat. She felt anger. She felt deceit and it burned, how it burned, inside her chest. Tears blurring her vision, but refusing to fall, she moved to the sitting room's door, and she pushed it slowly open. Completely open. A flood of mid-morning light poured onto her, a brightness on the black she wore.

The three occupants of the room were startled, Robert even visibly jumping, standing at her appearance. He said her name, but she didn't care.

"You lied to me."

Again, he muttered something.

"You lied to me," he tried to talk again, but Cora could not hear him. "Robert, you lied to me."

Then, not being able to look at him any longer, not being able to stand before them, the three people she loved more than anyone left in this world, hiding things from her, sharing in their lies, she turned from the door and she rushed toward her room – an escape. She choked at the thought that no, no there would never be an escape. Not from this. Not from any of it.

"Cora!"

She heard him now, but she didn't care. She didn't want to care.

"Cora, darling, please."

She felt the brush of his fingertips at her elbow and she whirled around, holding her arm stiffly. She stared up into his face.

"Cora -"

"How could you? How could you lie to me? You lied to me!" She was yelling, but not yelling; a desperate sort of angry confusion coming out in strained hushed tones, some words more emphatic than others.

"Lied? Cora, I never lied to you."

"You didn't tell me the truth, Robert. You hid the truth," she dropped her arm. "I'm not sure what you may call that in England, but here, and to me, that is lying."

Frustration registered in her husband's features. "I hid the truth to protect you."

"Protect me? From what? From what?"

"From the stress, from the worry! I thought it'd be more harmful to worry. I...I thought it may...may change the course of things!"

Cora stood straighter and pulled in a cold breath. "Do you have any idea how selfish that sounds?"

Clearly shocked, Robert, too, stood more upright. "What?"

"Have you any clue as to how selfish that sounds, Robert?"

And then, as if the floodgates had opened, as if the dam of all of his repressed emotions had been nicked by her tiny remark, Cora watched as his body rose in anger. "How selfish? How selfish! Yes. Yes! How bloody selfish! For God's sake, Cora. For God's sake! What would you have me do? What? What else could I possibly do to show my love for you! Against Dr. Warren's orders, against all my better judgement, I bring you here so you can mourn for your father. I bring you, ill as you are, across the damned ocean in mid-winter all for some mourning exercises that don't at all make the slightest bit of sense to me! I don't bathe. I don't change my clothes. I sit on the bloody floor all for a man who, quite frankly, detested me! But I do it regardless. I do it regardless, because I love you. I do it for you. For you! And you call me selfish."

And before Cora could react properly, Robert flew down the hall, and slammed a door, the paintings her father had given her shaking on the wall behind her.