“Kat! Look at me, darling! Look at me!”

She so very slowly turns her gaze to me.

“All will be made right,” I tell her. “I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of this.” I nod toward the letter. “I’m going to take you to her.”

“Mama,” she whispers again, and she’s looking at me but not seeing me, and I feel hot tears sting at my eyes. Oh, how I want to scream at a world that allows someone like Martin Hocking to keep breathing its air.

“I’ll take you to her,” I say again, and my voice breaks into pieces as I say these words. I draw Kat even closer so that she can rest her head on my shoulder if she wants, but she is stiff and limp at the same time. I could kill Martin for what he’s done to this child, for what he’s done to all of us. I can hear Belinda sniffling behind me.

“She . . . she . . . I didn’t . . . I didn’t . . .” But Kat doesn’t finish what she wants to say, and I shudder as I recall what Mrs. Lewis told me, that Kat thought it was somehow her fault that her mother had died. I can’t help but wonder now if it was Martin who first put that thought in her head.

I hold Kat at arm’s length so that I can look into her eyes. She stares back vacantly, as though she, too, is trying to make sense of what her father did to her.

“Listen, love,” I tell her. “As soon as the sun is up tomorrow morning we’ll be on our way. We’re going to send Miss Belinda home and then you and I will go find your mama, all right? I’ll take you to her, I promise.”

Kat blinks at me.

“Do you understand, my sweet? I’ll take you to her.”

She grants me a barely perceptible nod.

“I need the letter back, Kat. I need the address.”

Kat lets me take the letter out of her hand and I place it back in its envelope. I gather the other documents and the strongbox—which I will try to pry open later—and I hold them to my chest.

“Let’s go have a bit of supper, shall we?” I say, as brightly as I can. “And we’ll go to bed early so that tomorrow will come quicker.”

We head to the kitchen and I heat leftover soup and warm some bread in the oven. No one has much of an appetite. While Belinda and Kat clean up the dishes, I return to the library to use the telephone, and I place the call to Las Palomas. The night nurse tells me that, yes, Mrs. Candace Hocking still resides as a patient there, and, yes, she’s able to receive guests for short visits in the afternoons out on the patio. I don’t tell her who I am and the woman does not ask. The full confirmation that Candace is still alive doesn’t surprise me, and I’m glad there is no small part of me that hoped Candace had died. I don’t want that crushing disappointment to fall on Kat. Not now. Not twice. When I am done with the call, I close the library door so that the room will look at first glance just as Martin left it.