Tears as shiny as polished silver form in Belinda’s eyes. She blinks and they slide down her cheeks. I know why.

“There was no James Bigelow,” I tell her gently.

She smiles mournfully. “But there was.” She looks down at the cherub in her arms.

“And Martin killed him. That’s who was doing the killing, Belinda.”

“Was he going to hurt us?” Belinda murmurs, her eyes still on her sleeping child.

My mind takes me back to the seconds before Martin was sailing down the stairs, his arms and legs akimbo. I see in those beautiful eyes a glittering purpose, cold and hard as ice.

“Yes, I think he was.”

We are quiet for a few moments as all around, refugees and soldiers and Red Cross nurses and priests and firemen move past us in all directions.

Then Belinda sniffs hard and blinks back tears that threaten to continue falling. She turns toward the sea of tents, signaling that she is ready to move again. We resume walking.

“Where will you live now?” Belinda asks a moment later.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I will do after I take Kat to her mother.”

“You can come live with me. At the inn. I have plenty of rooms. You can help me run it. Help me take care of the baby.”

She doesn’t say it, but I think I hear in her voice the words, Help me let go of what was never mine.

Her offer fills my hurting soul with tiny seeds of comfort and hope. I don’t know yet what lies ahead. I don’t know what will happen to me when I meet Candace or what my options will be, if indeed I will have any. “Thank you. I’ll think on it. Thank you, Belinda. It’s quite kind of you.”

I am grateful when we arrive at the tent that the two sisters are still out and about and that Kat is alone on our bedroll. She glances at me first with disinterest, but then she sees Belinda coming in through the flap behind me and her eyes narrow a fraction in disbelief.

“Look, love!” I say to her. “Look who I found!”

Kat just stares, unblinking.

For a moment it seems Belinda isn’t sure how to respond to this reaction, but then she closes the distance to Kat.

“I had a hard time getting here, Kat,” Belinda says tentatively. “I hear you were looking for me and the baby. I’m sorry we weren’t here. I couldn’t get a carriage and they didn’t bring me to the park at first.”

Kat is still looking at Belinda as if she cannot trust that she and the baby are there.

Belinda kneels down onto the bedroll.

“Would you like to hold the baby, Kat?”

Kat slowly raises herself up to a sitting position, her face still awash with fear and doubt. When she is sitting cross-legged, Belinda moves to sit beside her and places the tiny bundle in Kat’s arms. It is only then, when she can feel the tiny weight of her half sister, that the veil of distrust begins to fall away. The infant emits a sad little mewl, and Kat begins to rock ever so slightly and the babe quiets. Through the folds of the blanket the baby is wrapped in, I can see that she is still wearing the little dress made from Kat’s old frock.