Elliot reaches out to clasp my hand again. “Thank you so much for helping Belinda, and for bringing her home.” He turns back to Belinda. “Where is James?”

I clear my throat. “Perhaps we should all go inside and let the driver be on his way?”

Elliot turns to the man. “Allow me.” He starts to reach into his pocket, but the driver, who has been watching us, perhaps a bit taken with the emotional reunion, says there will be no charge today.

He sets my travel case down by my feet, and the pillowcase bag. “Good day to you all.”

“Thank you. That’s very kind,” Elliot says quickly, picking up my case and the pillowcase bag in one hand.

The driver tips his hat and steps back up into the cab. With a flick of the reins he is off.

“Come,” Elliot says. With one arm around Belinda he leads us inside the inn.

The interior of the Loralei is as welcoming as the outside, although paintings and pictures thrown crooked have only partly been straightened to their right places, and I see a wastebin full of shards of glass and porcelain near the front door. The Loralei has lost some of its serving ware, I’m thinking. Elliot sets the travel case and pillowcase bag down in a large common room where there are sofas and armchairs and a stone fireplace that is dark and cold: the only dark and cold thing in the room. Belinda settles onto a sofa, the baby still in her arms.

“Everything is all right at the inn, except for those dishes?” Belinda says, nodding toward the bin near the entryway.

“Yes, yes. Aside from those and a few lamps and vases, most everything else is fine.”

“Thank you so much for watching the inn for me all this time, Elliot. I thought it was going to be just for an afternoon,” Belinda says wearily.

“No more talk of that,” Elliot says. “Tell me what happened. Where is James?”

Belinda turns to me. Without a word I rise from my chair and walk over to her. “How about if Kat and I take Sarah and go take a peek at your lovely garden, Belinda.”

Belinda looks up at me in both gratitude and trepidation as she hands me her child. What she must tell Elliot about the man she married she surely wants to say in private, but it won’t be easy.

“The back door is just off the kitchen, through there.” She nods toward a dining room with a long table and a breakfront empty of its dishes.

We make our way, Kat and I and the baby, through this room and into the sunny kitchen. It is large and cheery. Breakfast dishes and pots and pans are in the sink. There were no doubt guests here last night, and it must have fallen to Elliot to cook for them.

As we move toward the back door I hear Belinda say to Elliot, “I need to tell you something.”