Kat has stopped next to me, still some distance from her mother, and she is staring at the figure on the lounge. I cannot read Kat’s thoughts, but I am sure she is wondering how this withered waif can be her mother, how the voice she still remembers could be coming from a skeleton of a woman who has stolen her mother’s body. Despite the talk we had, Kat is unprepared to see her mother like this. How could any child not be?
I take Kat’s hand and we take a step forward before she stops again.
“Kat!” Candace says wearily, unable to keep her arm aloft. “It’s me, darling. It’s me. It’s Mama.”
Kat looks up at me and then at her mother. Candace tips her head to study me for a moment, as if seeing me for the first time.
“’Twill be all right, love,” I murmur to the child. “Remember what I told you?”
Kat’s grip on my hand tightens as we take another step toward the lounge chair. Candace reaches out again with one hand. The child is close enough now that if she just takes one more step, her mother could touch her. But she turns to me instead and leans in close to my body. Candace looks up at me again, her lovely eyes pools of sadness.
I look into those eyes, which are full of mother-love, and I saythe same thing to Candace that I said to Kat. “’Twill be all right,” I say. “Give her just a moment.”
Candace seems to hang on to my words as she brings her gaze back to her daughter. She lets her hand rest again on her abdomen. “I’m so glad you came, Kat,” she says, injecting artificial calm into her tone. I can hear the falseness clear as day. “I’ve missed you so much. I’ve prayed every day since I came here to see you. I’m so sorry it has been so long. I... I didn’t know where you were. I kept hoping I would get well enough to come looking for you. But I... I’m so sorry that I didn’t. I’m so sorry, Kitty Kat.”
It is when Candace says this pet name, a name that surely she’s called her daughter many times before, that Kat’s grasp on my fingers lessens and I feel her edge away from me. God, it feels all wrong and all right, how she is leaning away from me now and toward her mother.
Candace sees the shift and lifts her hand wearily again. This time, Kat takes it, and when she does Candace starts to pull her close.
The nurse who showed us to the patio and who has been standing next to me the whole time also moves forward. “That’s close enough, Mrs. Hocking. We don’t want your little girl to get sick, do we?”
Candace freezes, her hand still holding Kat’s. Their arms are bent into a triangle, as though they might arm wrestle.
Tears are cascading down Candace’s face. “I would hold you in my arms, if I could, Kitty Kat. If it was safe, I would hold you.”
Kat suddenly bends forward to rest her head in her mother’s lap. With her other hand, Candace begins to stroke her daughter’s hair. They have found a way to embrace.
A second nurse brings me a chair, setting it close to the lounge, and I gratefully slip into it. It is beautiful to watch mother and daughter holding each other, and it is dreadful. For many long moments no one says anything. When Kat finally lifts her head, she turns to look at me and I can see that she has been exhausted by the emotional weight of the reunion. I hold my own hand out and she comes to me so that I can pull her into my lap. I position her so that she can still hold her mother’s hand but can rest against my bosom.
Candace looks up at me in both relief and anguish. “Do I know you?” she whispers.
“No.”
“Did Martin send you? Is... is he coming?”
Kat stiffens slightly in my lap when she hears her father’s name. I pat her knee gently. Candace notices.
“Martin is not coming.”
“What is your name again?”
“Please just call me Sophie.”
A few seconds of silence pass between us.
“How... why...” But Candace’s voice drops away. She surely can sense that I cannot answer all her questions with Kat sitting there listening. I nod to assure her that I do have the answers she seeks.
I begin to share with Candace all about our train trip, the views we saw out our window, the stop in Los Angeles, seeing the tall saguaro cactus for the first time. I keep the chatter light and cheery, sharing with this woman what Kat would tell her if Kat had been living a normal life up until now. Candace is smiling at my descriptions but looking nervously from me to her daughter, surely concerned that I am doing all the talking.
I silently plead with Candace not to ask why, and she must sense this. As I chatter away, I begin to rock slightly in my chair, lulling Kat—I hope—to slumber. Candace watches me in fascination and distress. I think she can tell that I love this child and maybe even that this child loves me. It is disconcerting to her, as it would be to me. When Kat is in deep sleep, at my request the first nurse brings large sofa pillows from the visitors’ lounge and makes a bed for her on the patio stones a few yards away. I lay the child down and return to my seat. Then the nurse leaves us, taking all but one resident inside. Only an older gentleman remains, and he is nodding off.
“Who are you?” Candace says to me, wearily, but with keen interest. “Where is Martin? Why isn’t Kat saying anything?”
I have known this moment was coming, but even so, now that it is here, I fumble for a place to start. So much of what I have to say is terrible.
“I don’t know how to tell you everything you need to know,” I finally say.
Perhaps she can hear it in my voice, that Martin is gone, for she asks me before I continue, “Is... is he dead?” Her voice is bereft of strength.
