Then I sit her down with her hands folded in mine.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen today, love,” I tell her. “I don’t know if you’ll be coming back with me to this hotel tonight or if I will see you again before I’m asked to return to where I came from.” I watch her face to see if these words are affecting her.
She blinks. She breathes. She says nothing. But I feel her hand stiffen the tiniest bit under my palm.
“Whatever happens, I will come back to visit. I will bring Belinda and the baby with me. I promise you that, Kat. I promise.”
Her eyes take on a silvery luster.
“And I want you to know that I love you as if you were my own daughter. I always will. Will you remember that?”
I wait for her to answer me. Several seconds later she nods. Once.
“All right, then. Now, you know your mama’s been very sick. She may not be able to see us today or she might not be able to put her arms around you or the nurses might not let us get too close because they don’t want us to get sick. So we need to be ready for whatever we might see when we get there, all right?”
Another nod. I wish I knew what she was thinking. I wish I could hear her voice just one more time.
I hire a second carriage to take us to the sanatorium, which I learn is located two miles outside of town. Las Palomas, where Candace resides, is not the only sanatorium here, the carriage driver tells us; there are many others. It’s a booming business these days, he says, with consumptive men and women coming from everywhere to avail themselves of the hot, dry climate in Arizona.
“Do the people who come here get better?” I ask him. “Does the heat cure them?”
“I don’t rightly know. Maybe,” he replies. “I’ve never heard of anyone leaving a sanatorium here because they’re completely cured. I wager the heat slows the illness down. You can live longer here, but I don’t think very many go back home to where they were before. Some probably do.”
“And how does the rest of the town feel about so many ill people coming here?” I ask.
“Business is always a good thing, I reckon, and as long as the facilities are outside the city, I don’t suppose people are going to complain. We just don’t want the sick folks in town.”
It appears as if he’s about to tell me why no one wants the sick in town, but I already know why and I don’t want Kat to have tohear those reasons, so before he can say anything else I ask him about the tall, multiarmed cacti I’ve been seeing everywhere. He tells me they are saguaro and that they can grow to a height of sixty feet and live to be two hundred years old.
“They’re slow growers. They don’t do anything in a hurry.” He spends the rest of the time we are in his carriage telling us everything he knows about the saguaro.
We soon arrive at the sanatorium. It is a long, one-story structure surrounded by desert sand, acacia trees, and mesquite. It is plastered in the same white stucco and roofed with the same red tile as many of the buildings in town. A covered patio in the back and off to the side is partially visible from the gravel carriageway. A few residents in white cotton shifts are reclining there on wheeled lounges while a large electric fan stirs up the air. One woman is reading, one is napping, and two men are playing cards with each other. Neither of the women looks like Candace from this distance.
On a smaller patio in front of the entrance, a man in street clothes is talking with a beautiful but pale woman who is sitting in a wicker chair several feet away from him. I can tell without even hearing them speak to each other that the man loves the woman, and that he is sitting as close to her as he can without endangering himself.
In the courtyard of the entrance, and not too far from where the couple is visiting, is a large statue of the Virgin Mary. Her hands are open and inviting, as if to welcome any who might cross the threshold. A wooden sign next to her cautions visitors, however, that Las Palomas is for the treatment of tuberculosis—the scientific name for consumption—and that those who enter do so at their own risk. As we climb out of the carriage I ask thedriver to come back for me just before sundown or so. I can wait on the front patio if it only takes a little while to do what I must and then am dismissed.
The pale woman watches Kat as we make our way to the large wooden front door.
The inside of Las Palomas is surprisingly cool considering the heat outside. Ceiling fans on a low revolution speed twirl the air above our heads. The floor is tiled in terra-cotta squares, and brightly colored pots of palms grace all the corners. The large room resembles the inside of someone’s house, not a hospital. A nurse looks up from a writing desk.
“How can I help you?” She has kind eyes and a wrinkled face from perhaps many years in the Arizona sun.
I tell her that we’ve come to see Candace Hocking.
The nurse smiles and casts a glance at Kat. “We restrict visits from children, I’m afraid.”
“I thought as much,” I tell her. “But Kat here isn’t an ordinary visitor.”
Before I can explain why, the nurse says, “This is Kat? This is Mrs. Hocking’s daughter?”
It hurts to hear her say that. It shouldn’t but it does. “Yes. This is her daughter.”
“Mrs. Hocking did not say you were coming,” the nurse says, her tone a mix of alarm and delight.
“Mrs. Hocking does not know we are coming. I thought it best to wait until we arrived. Perhaps you could let her know we are here?”
“And is Mr. Hocking also coming?” she says, looking beyond me to see if Martin is hovering just inside the door.
