As I stare at the bizarre detritus at my feet, a mix of melancholy and uncertainty overcomes me.

I wanted there to be something left of Martin. I needed there to be a recognizable shred of who he was to bury, not because he deserves it but because I do, and so does Kat. It was never my design to hurt him, nor had it been Kat’s. Still, I chose not to save him. I chose not to run back into the house and drag his broken body out. I chose to deceive Kat so that I could protect her. I chose to let her imagine her terrible father being shooed out of the house after I’d helped him to his feet rather than have her see what pushing him down the stairs had truly done to him.

It seemed the right thing to do in that moment. And when Belinda’s waters splashed down at her feet onto the heaved ground, it seemed the right thing to leave Martin and get her and Kat to safety.

When it started to feel wrong was when I knew the fire was storming its way to this neighborhood, and I was safe at Golden Gate Park and able to alert someone that my husband was hurt inside our house and I said nothing. Perhaps I could have saved Martin if I’d told someone. But I didn’t.

Martin had been a cruel man, in both big and little ways.

To me, to Kat, to Belinda and Candace, and to poor Annabeth. Perhaps to others. It was not my responsibility to punish Martin Hocking for his crimes, but neither was it my responsibility to rescue him.

It wasn’t. It wasn’t.

This I know.

And yet I can’t shrug off the needling truth that Martin might have been able to get to safety somehow.

But . . . but how could he? He’d been gasping for breath as if at death’s door. I saw it in his beautiful eyes, and I know that look, don’t I?

I didn’t kill Martin Hocking. I just didn’t save him.

For the first time since it happened, I see the quake as an ally, not an enemy.

The earthquake and its blaze have surely covered what I did with a mantle of absolving fire. It was kind to me and Belinda and Kat in this way.

Perhaps it was the only kind thing it could do. Perhaps all during the catastrophe that began at dawn on the eighteenth of April, this was the only kind thing it could do. The earth can’t help its nature to shift from time to time as it settles itself back into its proper place. The earth did not build the city here, nor pipe it with gas, nor construct its bowels with water mains that couldn’t withstand the natural movement of the planet. People did that. It is the nature of the earth to shift. It is the nature of fragile things to break. It is the nature of fire to burn.