When it started to feel wrong was when I knew the fire was storming its way to this neighborhood, and I was safe at Golden Gate Park and able to alert someone that my husband was hurt inside our house and I said nothing. Perhaps I could have saved Martin if I’d told someone. But I didn’t.
Martin had been a cruel man, in both big and little ways.
To me, to Kat, to Belinda and Candace, and to poor Annabeth. Perhaps to others. It was not my responsibility to punish Martin Hocking for his crimes, but neither was it my responsibility to rescue him.
It wasn’t. It wasn’t.
This I know.
And yet I can’t shrug off the needling truth that Martin might have been able to get to safety somehow.
But... but how could he? He’d been gasping for breath as if at death’s door. I saw it in his beautiful eyes, and I know that look, don’t I?
I didn’t kill Martin Hocking. I just didn’t save him.
For the first time since it happened, I see the quake as an ally, not an enemy.
The earthquake and its blaze have surely covered what I did with a mantle of absolving fire. It was kind to me and Belinda and Kat in this way.
Perhaps it was the only kind thing it could do. Perhaps all during the catastrophe that began at dawn on the eighteenth of April, this was the only kind thing it could do. The earth can’t help its nature to shift from time to time as it settles itself back into its proper place. The earth did not build the city here, nor pipe it with gas, nor construct its bowels with water mains that couldn’t withstand the natural movement of the planet. People did that. It is the nature of the earth to shift. It is the nature of fragile things to break. It is the nature of fire to burn.
And just as it is the nature of men and women to build, it is also in our nature to begin again after disaster. This I know, too.
There is nothing left of the life I had here in San Francisco. I stand in the ashes of that life. And I realize with sudden relief that this is a gift to me as well. An amazing, wonderful gift. I can walk away and begin again, a step I have already mastered. I can do this. I have already done it. I am not some delicate thing that has been broken too many times. I am strong, I am resilient, andI refuse to be haunted by any ghost of Martin Hocking, dead or alive. I can walk back to the Townsend station, get on a southbound train to San Mateo, and never look back.
And then into this quiet and empowering meditation I hear a voice I recognize. I turn involuntarily toward the sound.
Libby from across the street is running toward me, calling my name.
26
INTERVIEW WITH MRS. SOPHIE HOCKING
CONDUCTED BY AMBROSE LOGAN, U.S. MARSHAL
CASE NUMBER 069308
Official transcript
San Francisco, CA
November 6, 1906
QUESTION:So it’s your belief, then, that Martin Hocking wed you to throw off suspicion that he marries women for their wealth?
ANSWER:That and he wanted a nanny and housekeeper for free. This is not just my belief, sir. It is fact.
QUESTION:And you say you arrived at this conclusion after meeting Candace Hocking?
ANSWER:Yes. Her father had reported Martin to the Los Angeles Police. Martin knew they’d be looking into his affairs. At what he does.
QUESTION:It is not against the law to marry a rich woman.
ANSWER:But Martin wasn’t taking care of Candace when she got sick. He waslettingher die. Surely that is illegal. Contact the Los Angeles Police and they’ll tell you. Candace’s father reported him.
QUESTION:I have already been in contact with the Los Angeles Police.
ANSWER:So you know that what I’m telling you is true.
