I hear chatter that the fires are headed toward the mansions on Nob Hill, and I know that means they are headed toward my neighborhood, too, and the house I was living in with my fraud of a husband inside it.

As we make our way back to the tent, it occurs to me that the men setting the charges will surely check the houses they are dynamiting to make sure the occupants have evacuated. If my house has been targeted to be dynamited, soldiers will step inside it to check. They will find Martin. Will he still be alive? Will he say anything? Or will he suppose that I have too much incriminating evidence against him? If he’s found, will he be brought here to the park to have his injuries treated? In my search for Belinda, will I find Martin instead?

In the tent as we rest I can’t shake the thought of chancing upon him among the rows of wounded.

Kat has said nothing since asking about her father the evening before. She wears a vacant look now that alarms me. It is as if she’s evaporating, disappearing into the ashes and smoke. I don’t want to take Kat to her mother, and yet I do. I sense an urgency to get her to Candace.

When darkness has fully fallen, and we curl up onto the army bedroll we were given, I pull her close to me and sing to her the Gaelic lullaby she loves. One of the old biddies hisses at me to stop making such a racket. But I pay that woman no mind. I sing until Kat is breathing slow and easy in my arms.

• • •

Friday morning dawns cloaked in the same throat-burning smoke as the day before. I can tell without even listening to the talk between soldiers and police presiding over the park that the fires have not abated. The widest boulevard in the city, Van Ness, which is lined up and down with stately homes, has been dynamited on its east side. And not just one block or two or even three, but twenty-two blocks—more than a mile of structures have been sacrificed to stop the inferno. My own street is only one block over from Van Ness, one block east, which means the fire will sweep across it before it reaches this new fire break. Perhaps it already has. Martin is either still inside the house or he isn’t.

Kat seems to hover between sleep and wakefulness this morning. She doesn’t stir when I try to coax her into getting up for breakfast, even though her eyes are open. I tell her if she doesn’t come with me that I’ll have to get our breakfast for us, and I’m so certain that she won’t want to be alone in the tent—the two sisters have gone in search of coffee—that she will get to her feet. But she just lies there and says nothing, does nothing. I hate to leave her like this, but she needs to eat, so I admonish her to stay in the tent and not to leave for any reason and assure her that I’ll be right back.