Claudia nodded, but her eyes were fixed on nothing as she experienced a fleeting connection with the world outside the bubble she and her mother were in. Thanks to everyone’s kindness and help, the coach house, mostly under Andee’s supervision, had already been cleared and cleaned and was now being rewired, replastered, and painted. She went herself, most days, helping out where she could, but her heart still wasn’t in making decisions about colors and designs.

She was thankful, of course, for everything they were doing, and for the way Dan had dealt with the insurance company, making sure that all costs were covered. She told her mother all about it during her visits, probably going into too much detail, or rambling off the subject at times without really knowing where she was going. She never mentioned anything about the arrests that had been made as a result of the documents in the attaché case being found. They would be of no more interest to her mother than they were to her. What mattered in their world was finding whoever had started the fire and getting him, or her, to provide the connection to Marcus. Making either of them pay wouldn’t undo what had been done, but they couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

MARCY HAD BEEN aware of almost everything that had happened to her since the early days of being admitted to the Burns Intensive Care Unit in Swansea. Although the ventilator tube had prevented her from speaking at first, she’d listened as each surgery was explained, from the first to clean the burns—how simple that sounded, how crucial and invasive it was—right through to the fourth, fifth, and sixth procedures that had mostly involved intricate and life-saving skin grafts.

The early ones, she’d been told, were called cadaveric allografts, meaning they’d used skin from a donor to cover her injuries; apparently they were the best form of dressing. However, the skin had no life of its own, so it fell off within two or three weeks. By then, the surgical team was ready to begin the autografts, which meant using her own healthy skin to further the healing process.

In order to restore her left eyelid, they’d transplanted a microscopic sliver of flesh from the inside of her right arm and apparently it had taken well. She already had partial, cloudy vision in the eye, but she’d been told it was unlikely the lashes or brow would grow back, owing to the destruction of the necessary follicles. As for the muscles required to make her blink, this was an ongoing process.