13

There have only been a handful of moments when I’ve wished I could turn back time and make a different decision. I’ve never regretted coming to America and I don’t regret answering Martin’s advertisement—not even now—but in this moment, if I could reverse time, I’d back it up an hour or two, and when the doorbell rang at half past four I would not answer it. I’d leave Belinda standing there wondering if she’s got the right house. I’d peer at her from behind the lace curtain at the sitting room window and I’d watch her walk away.

I don’t care anymore that Martin is living an illusion and forcing all of us to live his lies with him. I don’t care that he marries women because he wants something from them. And God help me I don’t even care in this moment that perhaps Annabeth Bigelow Grover’s riding accident wasn’t an accident.

All I care about is that I woke up this morning the mother of a little girl who needs me and loves me. And now I am just another pitiful soul Martin Hocking has trampled upon. Maybe he didn’t fiddle with the straps on Annabeth’s saddle, but he certainly stole Candace’s child from her. He told Kat her mother was dead. He gave Belinda a sham of a marriage. And now he’s given me a child who isn’t mine to keep. Candace is alive and living in a sanatorium in Arizona, wanting her daughter.

I feel Belinda at my side. She has risen from the chair to read the letter, too. I want to shove her out the front door, pretend I never saw her, never had any reason to pry open this desk today and unveil its secrets.

“Kat’s mother is alive?” Belinda says a moment later, in a horrified tone. “But that child thinks her mother is dead!”

Whatever I might say in this moment is frozen on my tongue.

We are both silent for several long seconds.

“How could he do that to a little girl?” Belinda finally says, and her voice cracks with what I recognize as mother-love. She is not exactly a mother, and neither am I, I suppose, but we are both on the edge of being one. She on the inside edge, and me on the outside edge.

How indeed could Martin do that to Kat? Say her mother is dead when she is not?

“I don’t understand why he would do that. Why would he do that?” Belinda implores, and she waits for me to answer.

“I . . . I wonder if he thought she would be dead of the consumption by now.” My own voice sounds like it’s made of air. “She’s an heiress. I’m sure that’s why he married her. And then lucky for him, she got very sick.”

“But,” Belinda says, staring down at the letter, “her father is still alive.”

“She had money of her own. From a grandmother. Martin told me this.”