“If everything you’re saying is true, why didn’t he just kill me?” Candace asks in a quiet but brusque voice.
“Because he didn’t have to. You were already dying. Killing someone is messy business. With you, he didn’t have to do anything.”
We are quiet for a span of seconds as the worst truths about Martin settle about us.
“You believe she was saving the life of that baby?” Candace says a moment or two later.
“I know she was.”
“Then... then it was a brave thing she did.” Awe now laces Candace’s words. “And selfless. She isn’t like him, but she’s not like me, either. It’s my fault she doesn’t speak.”
“I don’t think that’s entirely true. Kat was starting to talk more and more before Belinda came, before the earthquake. She wasbeginning to trust the world to hear her voice again. I think she was too young to lose you the way she did, and she found a way to live with that loss by holding in all her words. But I think Martin was glad of her silence. I think he used his coldness and his lies to keep her too despondent and heartbroken to speak. I think she’s gone quiet again now because she is bewildered and afraid. The earthquake and all those days afterward, they were days no child should have to see. I think she will find her voice again. Love brought it out before.”
“Love from you?” Candace asks, and this time I cannot read her tone.
“Yes. I do love Kat. I love her as though she were my own child.”
“And yet you brought her to me.”
“She is your daughter, from your own body. And she knew you were alive. I’d be no better than Martin if I kept her from you.”
“So you brought her even though this disease I have will probably kill me?”
This gives me pause for a moment. “Especially because of that.”
Again we are quiet for a few moments.
“I know... I know she can’t stay here at the sanatorium with you,” I continue. “I had supposed your father would be here and that perhaps he would insist on taking her. I’m sorry for your loss. The nurse told me your father died recently.”
“Yes,” Candace says tonelessly.
“And as for Kat, she can stay with me in town for as long as you like. I have a little room at an inn near the train station. I canbring Kat in to see you every day that you are allowed visitors, if you want.”
“You would do that?” she asks, bemused disbelief cloaking her tone. “You would do that for a sick woman you don’t know?”
“I would do it for Kat. You’re her mother and she loves you. I know she does. She wanted so much to come to you.”
“I suppose that would suffice until I can make other arrangements.”
I clear my throat nervously and for no good reason. “You don’t have to make other arrangements. I am perfectly able and willing to care for her. Now and... later.”
Across from us, Kat stirs on the cushions. Candace and I say nothing else as we watch her awaken. She sits up on the makeshift bed and looks first to me in puzzlement and then to Candace, as though she’s just been dreaming and in that dream there was only one of us.
“Come, sweets,” I tell her. Kat climbs up off the cushions and comes to me, and again I pull her into my lap so that she can be as close to her mother as the illness will allow.
Candace reaches out a weary arm and lays it across Kat’s lap.
The unfinished conversation Candace and I were having hangs between us like a heavy chain, but we sit in the baking silence, a trio of wounded souls, until a nurse comes for Candace and tells her it is time for her rest before supper.
“Which inn are you staying at?” Candace asks as the nurse releases the brake on her lounge chair.
“The Desert Rose.”
She nods and then looks to Kat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kitty Kat. All right?”
Kat nods once.
And then Candace is wheeled away from us.
