“I still don’t understand why he would tell Kat her mother is dead. Why tell her that?”

I can think of only one answer. I’d wager now it is the root answer for everything Martin Hocking does, now that I know the truth about him.

“Because it suited him. He wanted her to think Candace was dead. He wanted to live here in San Francisco as if she were.”

“But why? Why did he do all these terrible things to us!”

“Because he wanted something for himself,” I say, as everything I now know merges and assures me this is true. “He doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about anyone.”

“Not even his own child?” Belinda says, incredulous.

“Not even his own child. I thought he was the way he was because he’d known too many sorrows. I thought he had decided to abandon love, even for his own daughter, because he didn’t want to suffer any more because of it. But that’s not it, Belinda. He’s not paralyzed by grief. He’s just a soulless, lying cheat. That’s why he did all these terrible things.”

“Stop it,” Belinda whispers, wincing as if I’ve slapped her.

I soften my voice. The revelations swirling in my head are too hard for Belinda to hear. Too hard to hear all at once. But she has to hear them. Because we have to decide what happens next. “I’m sorry to have to say it. But it’s true. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love anyone.”

Again, we are silent for a few minutes.

Belinda casts her gaze over all the papers on the desk, at all the evidence of what Martin has done. Of who he is.

Of who he is not.

“What are we going to do?” she says, in a childlike voice.

“I’m fairly certain it’s illegal in California to have more than one wife,” I hear myself answer. “We can go to the police first thing tomorrow morning. We can have him arrested.”

“And then?”

“And then . . . and then he goes to prison. I think. I don’t know.”

“What about that little girl?”

I know what I should say, but it takes me several seconds to say it.

“She will need to be reunited with her mother.”

The clock in the foyer chimes half past six o’clock as I say this. Twilight has descended, and it will be followed by the heavy cloak of night. After we go to the police, everything will be different. The life I am currently leading will be over. I likely won’t have a place to live and certainly no means. The police might take Kat from me straightaway when they realize my marriage to Martin is bogus and that Kat’s mother still lives. They will take it upon themselves to transport Kat to Arizona. They will take that tortured child from me.

I can’t let that happen. She has already been through too much.

I should be the one to take her.