“Thank God!” he says, wrapping her in a gentle embrace so as not to crush the infant. “I was so worried when you and James didn’t come home! I told him where you’d gone, and he went looking for you. I expected you both back from San Francisco that night. And you’ve delivered the baby!” he says. “What happened? Where is James? Why isn’t he with you?”
Belinda opens her mouth to answer him, but even I would have trouble answering these questions, though I know all the answers to them. Her friend seems to sense she doesn’t know where to begin.
“Are you all right?” he says in a less agitated voice. “Are you hurt? Is the baby all right?”
“Yes,” she says. “I am all right and so is the baby. Sarah came nearly a month early but she’s strong and she’s healthy even though she’s small. We’re all right.”
“What happened? Did James find you?”
“I... I missed the train Tuesday night and I stayed with...” She pauses and then nods at me. “My good friend Sophie here. At her house in San Francisco. We... we were awakened before dawn by the quake, and then the baby started coming and there was no way to stop it. We... couldn’t get out of the city and the fires were everywhere. If it wasn’t for Sophie I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
Elliot seems to notice me for the first time. He extends his right hand in greeting. “Elliot Chapman. Pleased to meet you.”
I shake his hand. “Sophie Hocking. Likewise.”
“Sophie got me to the hospital, Elliot, when all the world was caving in around us, and nearly delivered the baby herself. She looked for me after we were evacuated. And she brought me here. Brought me home even after she herself lost everything.” She turns to me and there is so much she is saying to me without words. Her eyes are shining as she looks at Kat standing next to me and continues. “And this is her—” Belinda struggles for a moment and then the word slips out. “Her daughter, Kat.” I hear the catch of emotion in her voice as she says this while holding her own child close to her breast. Tears pluck at my own eyes and I blink them away.
Elliot reaches out to clasp my hand again. “Thank you so much for helping Belinda, and for bringing her home.” He turns back to Belinda. “Where is James?”
I clear my throat. “Perhaps we should all go inside and let the driver be on his way?”
Elliot turns to the man. “Allow me.” He starts to reach into his pocket, but the driver, who has been watching us, perhaps a bit taken with the emotional reunion, says there will be no charge today.
He sets my travel case down by my feet, and the pillowcase bag. “Good day to you all.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind,” Elliot says quickly, picking up my case and the pillowcase bag in one hand.
The driver tips his hat and steps back up into the cab. With a flick of the reins he is off.
“Come,” Elliot says. With one arm around Belinda he leads us inside the inn.
The interior of the Loralei is as welcoming as the outside, although paintings and pictures thrown crooked have only partly been straightened to their right places, and I see a wastebin full of shards of glass and porcelain near the front door. The Loralei has lost some of its serving ware, I’m thinking. Elliot sets the travel case and pillowcase bag down in a large common room where there are sofas and armchairs and a stone fireplace that is dark and cold: the only dark and cold thing in the room. Belinda settles onto a sofa, the baby still in her arms.
“Everything is all right at the inn, except for those dishes?” Belinda says, nodding toward the bin near the entryway.
“Yes, yes. Aside from those and a few lamps and vases, most everything else is fine.”
“Thank you so much for watching the inn for me all this time, Elliot. I thought it was going to be just for an afternoon,” Belinda says wearily.
“No more talk of that,” Elliot says. “Tell me what happened. Where is James?”
Belinda turns to me. Without a word I rise from my chair and walk over to her. “How about if Kat and I take Sarah and go take a peek at your lovely garden, Belinda.”
Belinda looks up at me in both gratitude and trepidation as she hands me her child. What she must tell Elliot about the man she married she surely wants to say in private, but it won’t be easy.
“The back door is just off the kitchen, through there.” She nods toward a dining room with a long table and a breakfront empty of its dishes.
We make our way, Kat and I and the baby, through this room and into the sunny kitchen. It is large and cheery. Breakfast dishes and pots and pans are in the sink. There were no doubt guests here last night, and it must have fallen to Elliot to cook for them.
As we move toward the back door I hear Belinda say to Elliot, “I need to tell you something.”
Since our clothes are already grime covered it doesn’t matter much that we sit down on the grassy dirt under a peach tree at the edge of the herb garden. I place Sarah in Kat’s arms because Kat seems to be most at peace when she is holding her sister, and the baby soon falls asleep in that tender cradle of young arms. Belinda will tell Elliot everything, I’m guessing, even what happened on the stairs. Probably what happened after, too. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I do not know the man.
But I do know what she has told me of him. She trusts him, and I can tell that he loves her. Still. I imagine she will also tell him Kat is not truly my daughter and that I will leave this place with her, and that when I come back—for I’ve decided I will come back to the inn to live, at least for a while—I will likely return alone. As I imagine her telling him this, I decide at that precise moment that I shall keep the surname Martin gave me even though I know it isn’t truly mine. If Candace and her father don’t insist I take back my maiden name, I don’t see the harm in keeping it. I’ve a marriage license that looks official enough. I shall ask this favor of Candace. It’s nothing compared to what I am giving her in return. This thought oddly comforts me, that I can keep it. It’s the only thing of Martin’s that I still want.
Kat and the baby and I sit in that beautiful, calm place for what seems a long while. I revel in the sun dappling our faces and the clean air and the buzz of honeybees in the blossoms above ourheads. I chase off any thought of transporting Kat to Candace tomorrow so that I can simply enjoy an hour with no ash or queues or troubling realities.
When Belinda emerges from the inn some time later, she sits beside us on the ground and puts Sarah—who is awake now and starting to get restless—to her breast. I want to ask her how much Elliot now knows, but we can’t have that conversation with Kat sitting between us. I will have to wait to ask her after Kat goes to bed.
