“I . . . I don’t . . . You don’t need to trouble yourselves,” I say.

“Nonsense!” she replies. “Look at you! You’re distraught.” Again she yells to Chester. “Darling, Mrs. Hocking’s husband is missing and no one’s been able to help her!”

“It’s all right.” I try to pull away, but she has her arm firmly across my back as we make our way across the cracked street.

When we get closer, I can see that the man with Chester is a policeman.

“We’ve had looters inside. Can you believe it?” Libby says. “We had to call the police to get them to understand they need to patrol the streets. Officer! Officer! You simply must help my neighbor here. Her husband is missing!”

The policeman turns to me. He looks weary and older than his years.

“Is that true, madam?”

“Of course it’s true!” Libby says.

“Let Mrs. Hocking answer, pet,” Chester says gently.

“Yes,” I reply. “He’s missing.”

“How long?” the officer says.

I pause.

“Since before the earthquake!” Libby blurts. “Tell him, Sophie.”

Oh, how I wish I could just evaporate into nothing.

“He travels for his job,” I finally answer. And then it suddenly occurs to me that I can just tell the police that Martin was expected home on the day of the earthquake rather than a day or two after it. Maybe they will more readily assume then that he was one of its victims. Declare him dead. “I expected him home around the time of the quake. But then of course there were those terrible fires. I . . . I’ve heard nothing from him.”

“And have you checked with the hospitals?” the policeman says. “The morgue?”

“She has!” Libby says woefully.

“Then you should come down to our temporary station and fill out a report,” the policeman says, shaking his head and looking at me with pity. “I can’t promise you we will find him, but we can keep a lookout.”

“We can bring her down to the station, can’t we, Chester?” Libby says, rubbing my arms as if she thinks I am cold.

I gently extricate myself from her. “You don’t have to do that. I can manage. Truly.”

“No, you cannot! You are in no shape to deal with this! You don’t even know where that temporary police station is. We’re nearly done here, aren’t we? Chester can finish boarding up the doorways and Officer Nichols and I will go down with you to the station. Chester can meet us when he’s finished here.”

“It’s not far,” the policeman assures me, “and I’ll be happy to take down the details, Mrs. . . . ?”

“Hocking,” Libby says, surely thinking I am too distressed to even remember my own name. “Sophie Hocking.”

Any chance that I might’ve slipped out of Libby’s clutches and out of San Francisco without visiting the police station is gone now. We turn to walk down the hill.

“I’m so terribly sorry about your house,” Libby says, linking her arm through mine. “So very sorry. We lost a great deal, too, but not like you. All your beautiful fireplaces lying there burned and broken like that.”