• • •

As the first of June approaches, I know I can no longer put off going back to San Francisco to see the ruins of the house for myself. I have checked the final tallies of the dead and injured from the quake and fire. Martin Hocking’s name is not listed anywhere, which means either he didn’t get out of the house and no one has identified his remains, or somehow he did get out but he didn’t use the name Martin Hocking while getting treatment for his injuries. I must know which it is.

The four of us—Belinda, Candace, Elliot, and I—sit in the common area one evening after the children are in bed, and on a night when there are no guests, to discuss what my next steps should be. It is nice to have Elliot a part of the conversation, as he is levelheaded and somewhat outside the situation. Not only that, but he made a trip to the county recorder’s office in Redwood City to look into the legalities of getting out from underneath a marriage when a spouse has vanished.

We already decided earlier that my reporting Martin as a polygamist to the San Francisco Police no longer seems wise. Neither Belinda nor Candace wants me going to prison for having abandoned Martin to die in that house, nor do we want blame to fall on Kat for having caused his terrible injuries in the first place. A full investigation into his polygamist activities would surely lead to the police to discover that Martin had come back to San Francisco on the day of the earthquake. I would be asked too many questions.

It does, however, seem to be in Belinda’s best interest to report one James Bigelow as having deserted her. Elliot tells us Belinda cannot file for a dissolution of her marriage based on desertion if she does not report that her husband has done so. We decide she will tell the authorities that she and James had grown distant since their rather impulsive nuptials, that he wasn’t keen on the responsibilities of being a father, and that he’d threatened to leave Belinda. The authorities may or may not exert any effort in looking for James Bigelow, but even if they do, what will they find of him? James Bigelow is a ghost. He will be seen as a scoundrel who truly abandoned his wife, leaving no trace of where he ran off to.

But it is not as clear to me what I should do. “If I go back to San Francisco and report Martin as missing, will they look for him?” I wonder aloud. “With everything needing to be done to recover from the earthquake, I wonder if they will.”

“Then the same will be true for you as it is for me,” Belinda says. “You, too, can be free to marry again. They will eventually declare Martin dead, won’t they?”

“After seven years,” Elliot says. “That’s a long time, Sophie.”