What can I do but go?

• • •

I choose carefully what I will wear to the police station. I dress in a tastefully subdued gray shirtwaist with black piped trim and eyelet lace at the neck and cuffs. I haven’t worn my wedding ring in many weeks, but I slip it on now before I go. Kat doesn’t ask where I am going, but I can see that she wants to know.

“Just some business to take care of in the city,” I tell her. “I’ll be home later today, I promise.”

Elliot drives me to the train station, and again, as before, offers to accompany me.

“Now, how would I explain you? You are unexplainable.”

“I suppose I am.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know,” he says, frowning. “Maybe it’s time to prepare yourself for learning that he is not dead after all,” Elliot says. “Maybe they found him and he’s alive. Maybe that fall down the stairs wasn’t that bad.”

“It was bad. He could barely breathe when I left him. And if he’d been found alive they would’ve said so; they wouldn’t ask me to come in to provide additional information. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Elliot. It’s making me nervous.”

We ride the rest of the way to San Mateo in silence.

The city has improved greatly in the months I have been away. Everywhere there is the aroma of fresh lumber and paint and the sounds of hammers and saws. New buildings have risen, most of the piles of ash are gone, and the landscape has gone from desolate wasteland to reborn city. It is much easier to get a carriage from the train station this time, and I am at the new police station many minutes before eleven o’clock.

I am told to wait after I give my name to the uniformed officer seated at a tall desk in the tiled lobby. I spend the minutes before anyone comes for me calming my thumping heart. When at last my name is called I am taken to a room with an oaken table and chairs that are new and that smell of tung oil. There’s a woman seated there with a stenography machine that also looks new. Next to her is a man I do not know. It is not Detective Morris.

“Thank you so much for coming in, Mrs. Hocking,” this man says, his voice cordial, his smile polite. “I’m Deputy Ambrose Logan.” He is a little older than me, perhaps thirty, and he reminds me a little of my brother Mason with his dark hair and eyes. When I ask where Detective Morris is, I am told that the case of my missing husband has been referred to the U.S. Marshal’s Office. I have to ask this Deputy Logan what that is. He tells me the U.S. Marshal’s Office deals with cases that are federal in nature. I don’t know what that means, either, but I do not ask. The deputy reaches down to the seat of the empty chair on his other side and lifts up a file thick with papers and sets it in front of him. A photograph of Martin slides out when he opens it and lands askew between us.