“Thank you for your help,” I finally say.
“I did nothing. You are the one who did everything. I can never repay you for it. You saved her life. In more ways than one.”
“You still love her?” I am sure of this, but I ask anyway.
“Always. I will never love anyone else.”
This man perplexes and amazes me. I eye Kat, a few feet away from us. She is staring off in the distance, detached from the moment and my conversation with Elliot. I turn back to him.
“Even though she married another man?” I ask quietly.
He shrugs. “I don’t think love is something you can start and stop by choosing. Our hearts tell us who we will love, not the other way.”
“You must’ve wanted him to disappear from the moment she met him.”
Elliot considers my words for a moment. “Am I glad he’s gone? Yes. Did I wish him gone? No. She cared for him.”
“She won’t always, Elliot.”
“I know,” he says. “I can wait.”
“That baby is a sweet little thing. She takes after her mother, I think.”
He smiles. “You are no doubt right.” He then hands me a piece of paper with the address of his carpentry shop written on it and a telephone number. “If anything happens and you need help right away, send me a telegram, or if you can get to a telephone, place a call to me. I’ll pay for the charges.”
“Thank you.” I take the piece of paper and place it inside my handbag. As I do, a thought occurs to me. “That old mine of Belinda’s has been visited, you know. It needs to be secured. Do you understand?”
He nods like he’s already thought of this. “I’ll take care of it.”
Elliot seems made of all the best attributes a person could have.
“You are a true friend,” I say. “She’s lucky to have you in her life.”
He says nothing to this, perhaps because he believes not in luck but rather something deeper and truer and hallowed.
For the first time in many, many months, I wonder where my own life would have taken me if I had known and loved a man like Elliot Chapman.
“I can escort you to the platform if you want help with the luggage,” he says.
This thought makes me laugh, and he smiles wide, too, at my needing help with a travel case I dragged across the peninsula with Kat in tow, all while being chased by fire and uncertainty.
“Thank you again for the ride,” I answer as I pick up the case and take Kat’s hand.
Together my girl and I make our way through the depot and onto the platform, where our train is waiting for us.
•••
The day is long and uneventful as we steam ever farther south. I get out Da’s word book after we leave San Jose, but my many attempts to have Kat choose a word for the day go unrewarded. I finally choose one for us. It’s a French word.Ménage.It means all the persons who make up a household.
We sleep a little, watch the world go by—most of it farmland opening up to desertlike terrain—and eat sandwiches Belinda made for us. When we finally reach the Los Angeles depot, a large structure with skylights and an arched roof that soars above the station’s platforms, it is near nightfall. I find us a little hotel a block away from the station so that we can easily get to our early-morning train to Tucson. The buildings here are not as tall as those in San Francisco were, and the feel of the place is different, too. The sun seems closer somehow. And the sky bigger.
If Kat finds this corner of California familiar to her, I can’t tell. I’m sure she was at this train station when she and Martin left Los Angeles, but I see no evidence on her face that this place has any meaning to her. There is only the slight sheen of anxious expectation in her eyes; at least that’s what I think it is. I am tempted only for a few seconds to ask the hotel manager if I might use their telephone and pay whatever it will cost to call the sanatorium in Tucson and tell the nurse in charge that we are coming. Right now Kat is still mine, and when I hand her over tomorrow to Candace she won’t be.
The next morning, a little after sunrise, we board the train that will take us to Arizona. I don’t know how well Kat slept, but I slept poorly, and as we ease away from Los Angeles and toward golden mountains the color of toast and honey, the clacking of thetrain soon lulls us both to sleep. When I awaken we are in the middle of a barren wasteland dotted with towering, multiarmed cacti that look as though they are beings from a fantasy world. We head to the dining car for lunch, and then finally at a little after one in the afternoon we pull into the Tucson station, a wooden depot with deeply set eaves and windows that are shaded by colorful awnings. It is only late April, but it is already ninety summerlike degrees. I can see why people who suffer from consumption move to this part of the country. The heat is intense and bone-dry. I am no expert on the disease ravaging Candace’s body, but I do know consumption turns the lungs into a wet soup before it kills you. Anything wet here is surely soon dry.
I hire a carriage to take us to a hotel near the station. The two-story building is plastered in creamy white stucco with arches and a red-tiled roof. The inside of the hotel is only slightly cooler than outside, but I want to freshen up—as best I can—before I take Kat to her mother. And I want Kat to look well cared for, too.
I change and apply fresh toilet water. I rebraid Kat’s hair and retie the ribbons on her dress.
