Hevlaska looked away from the television at the knock on her door, then blinked. There, behind an enormous bouquet of flowers, was Marian Cross.

He grinned. "Surprised?"

"Yes," she said, pushing a button on the remote. She needed to talk to him, and was dreading the prospect of trying to track him down from a hospital bed. "Get in here! Have a seat."

He set the flowers down on the bedside table and settled his lengthy frame into the recliner. "I'm not here for pleasantries," he said. "What did he get?"

"Nothing. How did you know?"

"How did I know it wasn't a random burglary gone wrong?" He snorted. "Don't insult my intelligence! So why the fire? Spite?"

"He was trying to burn his way into one of my safes."

"Did he make it?"

"No. It's made of steel and bolted to a very heavy sofa. Of course he did a number on the sofa before the fire department got there."

Cross laughed. "Thanks, Hevlaska."

"You knew I'd do it." She was surprised at how resentful she felt, but she was being used. Again.

"I knew Allen would be safe with you," he said, "although I had no idea there would be arson involved. What was he thinking?"

"That he has diplomatic immunity," she said. "He can do whatever he likes, including setting fire to my furniture. Be careful, Marian!"

"What's he going to do, burn my hotel room down? It won't do him any good. I'm not like you. I don't keep paperwork."

"I hope you're right," Hevlaska said.

"I don't care what he does," Cross said. "It's too late. Too many pieces in motion."

Certainly the most significant piece was moving. "Have you talked to Allen?" Hevlaska asked, still unsettled.

"About what?"

"About what he's doing here?"

"No," Cross said.

"You should," she said.

"Why?"

"Maybe it will help him," Hevlaska said.

"I'll talk to him if I need to."

"You should at least tell him who he is," Hevlaska said.

"Why?" Cross asked. "It won't help him."

"Maybe not, but he might like to know."

Cross shrugged. "I'll tell him later."

"The longer you wait, the worse it will be."

"Really?" Cross asked. "He's made it sixteen years without knowing. I don't see what difference it makes at this point."

Hevlaska had spent enough time around orphans and abandoned children to know that it made an enormous difference. Even those who had been removed from abusive homes still carried a lingering sense of attachment to the families they were born into. Every once in a while she ran into someone like Kanda, who genuinely didn't care, but for every one like him, there were more like Daisya, who were willing to die for parents they hadn't seen in years. "It matters, and the longer you withhold that, the harder it will be for him to forgive you."

Cross laughed. "I don't need him to forgive me. I need him to do what he was trained for."

"Really?" Hevlaska asked. "You trained him and spent all this time looking out for him, and now you're telling me you don't care what he thinks of you?"

"He's still a child. He'll change his mind about me a million times. Me getting attached to being in his good graces won't do either of us any good."

"Do you really believe that?"

Cross sighed as if blowing out smoke. "Would it do any good to believe something else? The world is as it is. We can't change it."

"Now that I know you don't believe," Hevlaska said. "You've been trying to change the world ever since you came into it."

"Fat lot of good it's ever done me."

"At least you try." Hevlaska remembered the first time she held Maria's baby in her arms. Had she tried to change the world then, it might have done some good. Instead, she had found him a place in it, and she was painfully aware of how badly that had gone.

"You overestimate yourself," Cross said.

"Thanks," she said.

He ignored her wry tone. "You don't think you should have to choose your battles."

"Are you saying that you have?"

"Very carefully," he said. "It means my energy and resources aren't divided, so when I fight, I win."

"You really think you'll win this one?"

"I am winning," Cross said. "It's only a matter of time. Oh, I keep forgetting." He reached into the inside breast pocket of his coat. "Here."

Hevlaska fumbled with the envelope and pulled out a photograph. It wasn't a very good one, just a print of a digital snap of a headstone, but as she read the name on it, her eyes filled with tears. "How?"

"DNA," Cross said. "They matched it to one of the unidentified bodies."

Hevlaska wiped at her eyes. "Thank you."

"For what, letting them scrape the inside of my cheek with a swab? I didn't even have to sober up for it."

"Thank you," she said again.

"I almost didn't give that to you," he said. "I knew you'd start blubbering."

"Oh, go to hell, you heartless little shit!"

"What did I tell you about calling me little?"

She laughed in spite of her tears, but he was right. He was everything else she could think of to call him, but one thing he was not and never had been was little. "I wish her mother had lived to see this."

"I don't," Cross said. "Then I'd have to deal with two blubbering old ghouls instead of one. Put it away or I'm leaving."

"Blubbering old ghoul, is it? Do you know what?" she asked, putting the photograph on the night table next to the vase. "I wish I could borrow a cigarette, just to make you go to the expense of replacing it."

Cross wagged a finger at her. "Now, now! Haven't you had enough smoke for a while?"

"That smoke had nothing therapeutic in it," Hevlaska complained, "just a lot of wood varnish and cushion stuffing, with a few delicate whiffs of my sarouk rug."

"He burned the sarouk?" Cross demanded with mock indignation. "I expected you to will it to me."

"I might do just that," she said, "being sure to preserve it in its current condition, with a great big scorch mark where my sofa used to be. You deserve it."

"As long as you leave me enough money to get it cleaned, I'll take it."

After he left, Hevlaska reached for the photograph and the box of tissues, knowing she could not manage the one without the other. It was a simple headstone with just a name and a date of birth, blessedly free of a cross. The date of death was unknown, since it had not been properly recorded. Not all deaths in the Magdalene laundries were.

Hevlaska closed her eyes, thought back to that afternoon in Belfast when a mother brought in a little girl in tights, a leotard and a soft skirt. "I understand you give discounts if a child is exceptionally talented," she said as the little girl took off her street shoes.

"We do," Hevlaska said, "but the testing is rigorous. If she has a delicate temperament, she might not be able to stand it."

"Oh, delicate she's most certainly not!" the mother said with a laugh. "Got a head like a mule, that one, and she's bound and determined to be a dancer. She heard about you from a school friend who failed, and she just had to come."

"Lilian is lazy," the little girl said with a disdainful sniff. "She wants to be pretty, but she doesn't want to work."

Hevlaska thought that was a remarkably accurate assessment of Lilian, and she knelt down on the floor in front of the little girl. "Do you want to be dancer badly enough to work very hard for it?"

"I don't want to be a dancer," the child said. "I want to be a butterfly. I thought a dancer would be the best second best."

Hevlaska laughed, charmed. "Let's have a look at you then, and see what you can do. I'm Miss Rouvellier. What's your name?"

"My name is Maria."

Hevlaska opened her eyes to gaze at the headstone while tears streamed down her cheeks.