I let the tears fall then.
I don’t care about this house and my fine clothes and the little sapphire on my finger and my new last name. I don’t care that I’m not married to anyone, legally.
I’d give it all up to keep Kat. Yes, I’ve long wanted what my mother had, and what I had with her, back when she had it. I wanted a cozy, warm home. A gentle man to share my life with.Children to raise and love. When I helped Mam care for the wee ones whose mothers worked at the docks, I used to imagine the tots were mine. I loved pretending they were mine.
I know now Kat is what I had wanted most of all.
But Kat is not my child. She never was. She is Candace’s little girl.
Why in God’s name did Martin bring me out here? He didn’t need me. Why bring Kat to San Francisco in the first place when he could have just as easily left her on Candace’s father’s doorstep when her mother was whisked away to that Arizona sanatorium? Why complicate his appalling endeavors with the annoyance of caring for a child he does not love?
Why, why, why?
The water is cool when I finally pull myself out of it. I towel myself dry and put my nightgown back on. I head back to my bedroom, my head throbbing with unanswered questions. I crawl back into bed and beg for sleep to come. Many minutes later, it finally does.
I wake well before daybreak, and I know slumber will not return to me. My heart is aching as I dress in the dark. I know I am setting out to do a grand thing—reuniting a child with her mother is the grandest thing I could ever do—but my soul is still heavy. I am wondering as I work my buttons if perhaps Candace will let me stay and care for Kat while she convalesces. Surely children are not allowed to live at the sanatorium with their mothers. And yet I can easily see Candace’s father sending me away after I return Kat to Candace because he can pay a reputable nanny to watch over his daughter’s child. Why would he or Candace trust me to care for Kat? I’m a stranger to them. I ampondering these thoughts when I hear a noise downstairs, the sound of a key in a lock.
Icy dread immediately courses through my body. Only one other person besides myself has a key to the front door lock. Martin.
I hear the door creak open. I hear a footfall on the tiled entry. At the sound of the door’s closing, Belinda sits up in bed.
“What was that?” she murmurs.
“It’s the front door,” I whisper. “Get up!”
I move to the bedroom door, which I left open as we slept. I hear Martin pause in the entryway and I know he is looking at the travel cases and the neat pile of folders and the little drawstring bag.
I step out onto the landing so that he will look up at me and take his eyes away from everything Belinda and Kat and I need to make our escape. When I get close to the stairs, I see that he has the little drawstring bag in his hand. He has opened it and in his palm is a dirty gold nugget. He looks up at me.
Martin flipped on the electrical light that hangs in the foyer because the morning sun has not yet begun to rise, and in that light, his beautiful eyes hold my gaze. I do not see hate or rage or dread in those eyes, because those responses require human emotions, and I no longer think Martin possesses them.
“What is all this?” he says in a tone void of inflection.
I summon courage from some unknown place inside me, because I feel nothing but cold fear. I walk to the edge of the staircase, putting a buffer of space between him and the bedroom behind me. “Kat and I are leaving.”
He drops the nugget back into the drawstring bag, pulls itclosed, and places it atop his own valise, which is resting at his feet.
“Going where?” He takes a step toward the stairs. Toward me.
“Stay right there!”
But he takes another step and another and then he places his hand on the banister.
“Stop!” I shout.
“Or what?” he says, but he stops.
“I know,” I reply. “I know what you’ve done. I know Candace is still alive. I’m taking Kat to her, and you’re not stopping me.”
He is on the first step.
“I have told the police everything!”
“I don’t think you have,” he says as he takes another step and another.
I look for anything to use as a weapon to defend myself against him if I must, but there’s nothing on the landing except a little table and a vase for flowers made of delicate blown glass. I whisk my attention back to him. “The police have seen all the files, Martin,” I say, trying to sound bold and confident, but I can hear the uncertainty in my voice. And yet I go on. “You’d be wise to go. Take the gold if you want. Just take it and go and leave us alone.”
He takes another step. “I don’t think the police have seen anything. I think you just found those documents.”
