Chester leaves us to find a work crew for me that can, I hope, start in the morning. Libby and I settle in first to tea—the nanny is also her maid—and then playtime with Timmy, who has indeed grown taller in the couple of months since I’ve seen him. Libby fills the time with talk of their travels, of discovering she was with child when she vomited all over a banqueting table in Boston, and of how hard it was to hear of the disaster that had befallen San Francisco while they were away and to know her home had most likely been destroyed.

“It wasn’t completely destroyed, of course, but everything inside that didn’t burn reeked of smoke afterward. We were hardly able to salvage anything,” she says, as we sit on the floor with Timmy and a basket full of new toys. “And yet looters are still sneaking their way into the house at night to comb through the ashes looking for valuables. It’s so ruthless, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” People can indeed be ruthless.

She asks about the friends I am staying with and how I made it out of the city and what I’ve been doing all this time.

I keep my answers short and simple and vaguely truthful. “Kat and I took a ferry to Oakland several days after the quake and then a train down to San Jose to get to my friend’s place near San Mateo. We’ve just been recovering from the shock of the last few weeks. It was hard on Kat, as I’m sure you can imagine. And my friend just had a baby, so we’ve been helping.”

“I am surprised you’ve made a friend who lives elsewhere than in the city,” Libby says, curiosity clinging to her words.

“Belinda and I have a mutual friend in San Francisco. Kat and I were fortunate to have somewhere else to stay besides here. So tell me. How will you decorate the new nursery?”

Libby spends the rest of the time until Chester returns telling me every detail of her plans, not just for the nursery but for the inside of her soon-to-be-repaired house. She stops twice to ask if she should stop, if sharing her ideas is making me grieve too much the loss of my own house, and I tell her to keep talking. It is therapeutic to hear talk about all the new things that will emerge out of the dust of the destruction.

And it helps pass the time.

When Chester arrives, he tells me luck shone on him today; he found a four-man crew that was finishing up hauling away debris from the remains of a business on Leavenworth and who can be at the site of my house at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.

“It’s not necessary for you to be there, Mrs. Hocking,” Chester says. “If you think someone needs to watch over the workmen, I can be there. The academy is on a term break right now for the summer. I’m happy to do it.”