I nod and say nothing. Emotion as thick as taffy is wedged in my throat. I swallow against it.
“Your brothers were there to help you and your mother?” Candace asks.
“The older ones were married and on their own already. My brother Mason, who was nineteen, had already been set to come to America, and my mam told him not to stay back when he’d worked so hard to save to go. So then it was just Mam and me at the house.”
“And?”
“And it was difficult for us without my father’s income, to be sure. My two older brothers had their own families to provide for and I think their wives resented Mam’s and my need. It was not a good time.”
“But you left, too.”
“I... I did. A few years later.”
“You left your mother?”
I feel again the lapping of waters that I will not step into.
“She wanted me to go,” I say, and nothing else.
Candace stares at me for a moment. “Are you close with your mother? Do you miss her?”
The image of Mam crying as she helps me pack my bag, and then pressing into my hand money she can’t afford to give, fills my head; the ache of it fills my heart.
“Yes. I miss her very much.”
“I miss my mother, too. You are lucky you can perhaps see yours again someday. I wish I could see mine. I would tell her how sorry I am.”
I flick a stray tear away, smile at Candace, and say nothing.
“Do you think I will see her when I die? Will I see my mother in heaven?” Candace asks, holding my gaze as if she truly believes I know the answer.
“I can’t imagine God keeping mothers from their children in that beautiful place,” I venture.
She rests her head against the pillowed back of her lounge chair. “Yes. How could it be heaven if you were sad there?”
Kat strolls back to us and hovers between her mother’s bed and my chair. Candace lifts her hand. “Come sit on my bed, Kitty Kat.”
The child goes to her. Candace is tired from our visit, and Kat is giving away no words today. As I have nothing else to add, we sit in silence as the fan circulates the air above our heads and sweat beads on our brows and necks.
When we leave a little while later, Candace tells us she’ll see us tomorrow. A hint of a smile tugs at Kat’s mouth.
•••
The next afternoon Candace wants Kat to herself during the visiting hours on the patio and I am asked to wait inside in thereception area. I watch with hesitation as Kat is led back. She turns once to look at me and I assume she wants assurance I’ll be waiting for her, so this is what I tell her.
The next day it happens again, and the next. I ask the nurse who has been escorting Kat if Mrs. Hocking and her daughter are enjoying their visits, but what I truly want to know is if Kat is speaking to Candace.
The nurse smiles and shrugs. “They spend most of their time looking at nature books Mrs. Hocking has borrowed from the sanatorium library. You know how the child is. She doesn’t talk.”
On the fifth day, when Kat is collected to be taken back to Candace, she grabs my hand as if to take me along.
“I’m not sure I’m invited to go onto the patio with you,” I tell her.
Kat stares at me for a few seconds before frowning and whispering the first word I’ve heard from her in days. “Come,” she says.
I look to the nurse for confirmation that I am also being asked to come to the patio and she again shrugs; this was apparently Kat’s idea.
“I see no harm in your going back with her,” the nurse says. “You can always sit off to the side.”
