27

When Libby reaches me, she flings her arms around me and presses us into a fierce embrace.

“I have been so worried about all of you,” she exclaims. “I was afraid something terrible had happened when all the neighbors started returning to the street to clean up and no one had seen you or knew where you all were. Are you all right? Are Mr. Hocking and little Kat quite well? Is everyone all right?”

She steps back to assess me. I still can’t quite believe that there will be no vanishing act on my part now, and I fail to answer her questions. Libby mistakes my numbness for inability to share with her some kind of devastating news.

“Oh, my dear! What has happened? Tell me! Where are Kat and Mr. Hocking?”

“They, uh . . . ,” I begin, and then falter. “Kat . . . Kat is with a friend. She and I made it out of the house and . . . we were evacuated to Golden Gate Park and then we . . . we’ve been . . . staying with a friend south of the city.”

“Oh, thank goodness! And Mr. Hocking?”

“I . . . we don’t . . . I don’t know where he is.”

Libby’s eyes widen. “What do you mean you don’t know where he is?”

“He . . . uh, he didn’t return from his last business trip before the earthquake.”

“Do you mean you haven’t seen or heard from him since?” Libby’s eyes widen even more.

I shake my head. My thoughts are racing. I don’t know how much to say. It seems everything I am telling her is too much. Too much if I want to just disappear.

“Oh, you poor darling,” Libby exclaims. “You poor, poor thing. And what has anyone been doing about it?”

I shrug. I don’t know what to tell her, so I tell her nothing.

“Are you saying no one has done anything to help you find him?”

Again I shake my head. Oh, for the love of God, why can she not just leave me? Why can’t she just waltz back across the street and forget she saw me?

“And you’ve checked all the hospitals and—oh, I have to say it, dear—the morgues? You’ve checked with them?”

“Yes.”

“And you told the police he is missing?”

“No. This is the first day I’ve been able to get back. I thought . . . I thought maybe I’d find him here.” I almost let out a laugh. I had thought I’d find him here. In blackened pieces.

Libby turns to face her own house with her arm still around me and begins to propel us toward it. “Chester! Chester!” she shouts, and I can see that her husband is standing outside the wreck of their home staring up at it. Another man is standing next to him.

“Don’t you worry, now,” Libby soothes in a voice I’ve heard her use with her little boy. “We’ll help you.”