PROLOGUE

I feel a stab of guilt as I board my flight home. I have gone a week without thinking about my sister. The last time I thought about Annie was when the Tyler twins walked onto the stage to receive their diplomas.

"All right, Miss Mary Wilcox. You're all set. Seat 14C."

I thank the gate agent, then turn my thoughts deliberately back to the Tyler's to avoid thinking of Annie.

The Tyler twins are fifteen and geniuses by most standard measures. They were also utterly out of control before their parents hired me. I worked with them through their last semester of school prior to university. It's challenging work, but at least the Tylers don't have skeletons in their closet like the Ashfords and the Carltons, the two families I work for prior to the Tylers.

Cecilia Ashford murdered her husband, and Eliza Carlton murdered a rival lover. Both managed to conceal their guilt until I brought the disappearances of both victims to light.

I have yet to bring Annie's disappearance to light. She disappeared just before my graduation from university twenty-nine years ago. I have yet to learn what happened to her,

and now, the guilt weighs heavily on me. Niall, the Carlton's groundskeeper, gives me the number of a private detective so I can have help in case I stumble on any more dangerous secrets in my line of work. He doesn't know about Annie, but I do, and I choose not to use this resource to find her.

So much for not thinking of Annie.

It occurs to me for the first time that a part of me doesn't want answers. A part of me is content to leave Annie's memory in the past. A part of me has grown comfortable simply ignoring the mystery and living my own life.

So, I feel guilty, but instead of taking action to alleviate my guilt, I bury it and focus on the job ahead.

I am flying directly to Savannah, Georgia. This job is an unconventional post for me. The Greenwood children are both grown, so I will be working as governess for those children for the three days they're not in school. When I am not working as a governess, I will assist in housekeeping. I have to admit I'm somewhat intrigued by this. I've never taken a housekeeping job. Maybe this will be good for me. Maybe by focusing on mundane work, I can avoid the urge to make this family's scandals my own. And perhaps, by avoiding the scandals that plague the lives of others, I can allow myself some closure from the scandal that plagues my own life.

That resolve lasts for all of ten seconds. Then I catch a glimpse of the man sitting across the aisle in the row just ahead of me. He's watching one of the flight attendants, a young woman in her mid-twenties with an excellent figure to go along with striking blue eyes and the naturally blonde hair that so many gentlemen still prefer.

This man clearly prefers it. So much that he slips his wedding ring off and slides it into his pocket.

It's none of my business, of course, but I can't stand dishonesty. I can't stand secrets. To lie to someone who loves you, someone you claim to love, is among the lowest acts a person can commit.

I bite my tongue when the flight attendant turns around, and the man begins his attempt to charm her. A rather feeble attempt if you ask me, but I'm a fifty-one-year-old woman who's seen almost everything. The twenty-five-year-old flight attendant is taken in, and when I see her blush and smile coyly in response to his flirtation, I can't control myself anymore.

I say, loudly enough that the entire cabin can hear me, "Goodness, that was a lovely wedding ring!"

The man jumps and stares at me in shock. "Excuse me?"

As if there could ever be an excuse for you , I manage not to say. Instead, I say, "The ring you slid into your pocket for safekeeping. It looked lovely. I assume you put it away so you wouldn't risk losing it on the flight. If I had a wedding ring so beautiful, I'm sure I would do the same. How long have you been married?"

The man tries to stumble through a denial of his marital status, but the damage is done. The flight attendant's mood instantly becomes frosty. She straightens, and her smile fades. The man looks at her almost desperately, but he's smart enough to realize he's lost his chance. He gives her a perfunctory smile and says, "Have a nice flight."

"You too, sir," she says in a voice just as frosty as her stare.

She gives me a grateful look as she passes. Her would-be lover fixes me with a glare that I return with the sweetest smile I can manage. He reddens and mutters something about a "meddling bitch," then looks ahead to enjoy—or perhaps endure—his flight. Alone.

I keep my smile as I look ahead. Without endangering myself or anyone else, I've prevented a liar from betraying his wife and seducing an innocent woman. I only wish all problems were so easy to solve.

As the plane lifts off from Heathrow, and I bid England farewell, my thoughts turn back to my sister. Annie, so beautiful, so proud, so alive. I hate that I don't know what happened to her.

The police view is, of course, that she was attacked, assaulted, and then murdered. The lack of evidence to support this is tragic, but unfortunately not unheard of in cases of kidnappings.

The other possibility is that she may simply have left. In the weeks before her disappearance, she talked to me about running away, abandoning our life in Boston, abandoning our parents, abandoning our predetermined futures and building a life on her own terms somewhere far away. I'd like to think this is what truly occurred.

But she never contacted me, and I can't believe that she would have left me behind as well as our parents. Not when we were so close. Something happened, and not knowing kills me.

But it also drives me, and as I notice the lines in my face deepening, I am less and less able to escape the urge to find answers while I still can.

Annie is not in my thoughts often during the past six months, but I am certain she will occupy a great deal of them in the months to come.