“Do you want to talk about anything?” I ask her. “Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you?”
And to my surprise she leans into me and murmurs, “I want... to go home.”
It is a giant of a sentence for a girl who hardly ever speaks, and such a surprising one; so surprising that for a moment I am speechless.
“Home?” I finally echo.
“I want to go home.”
I don’t know how to respond to her. What is she thinking of when she thinks of home? It can’t be here in Tucson with her mother or she wouldn’t have uttered these words. Is it the house in San Francisco? Did that place, with me there as her second mother, feel like home to her? The thought that this might be trueis dizzyingly sweet one moment but achingly disquieting the next. I haven’t even shared with her that the house we lived in is most likely gone.
“I have something I need to tell you about our house in San Francisco,” I say. “I probably should have told you sooner, but we’ve been so busy with... all the changes.”
She tips her head up to look at me, her questioning eyes inviting me to continue.
“The fire that was so terrible when we were sleeping in the park? It came to our street, Kat, and I’m pretty sure that it took the house. The clothes and toys and drawings that were in your room... I’m sorry to tell you, poppet, but I believe they are gone. I think all the houses in our neighborhood are gone.”
Her eyes widen but she says nothing.
“But I want you to know that if the fire did take our house, what was inside it can be replaced,” I say. “You can get new clothes and new toys and new books, all right?”
She stares at me, taking in this news silently. And then she whispers, “Timmy’s house, too?”
“I don’t know for sure, love. Timmy’s house was made of bricks so maybe it did not burn all the way. But he wasn’t home then, remember? He and his parents were gone the morning the earth shook. They weren’t there. I’m sure he’s fine.”
“My house is burnt?”
“Yes, love, I think it is.”
She ponders this silently for a moment, as she looks out the carriage window. I can’t tell what she is thinking. I am about to ask her if this news is upsetting her when she turns her face upward toward mine again.
“Are you sad?” she asks.
“A little,” I answer. “I was happy living there with you. Are you sad?”
Kat is quiet a moment. “A little.”
“But I am so very happy that even though the house might be gone, you and I are safe.”
“And Mama and Belinda and baby Sarah, too,” she adds, as though they had all been with us the whole time and I forgot to mention them.
I realize at this moment that what she’s missing is not so much the house itself but something else, something a fire cannot touch. It’s that sacred place where your soul is at rest because all the people you love most are there. I know the place. I knew it in Donaghadee, a long time ago, and I’ve stumbled upon it again, in my own strange way, with Kat.
“Yes.” I kiss the top of her head. “Mama and Belinda and baby Sarah, too.”
“But not Father,” she says, and I lift my head from hers with a slight start.
“What was that, love?” I say, and I can feel the calm of the previous moment bleeding away like water in a drain.
“Not Father.”
I want her to continue, to tell me what she means, but I don’t know how to coax thoughts out in a way that will keep her thinking of home and everything wonderful. I pull away just enough to be able to see her expression. She is staring at the floor of the carriage, a pensive look on her face.
I fold my arms tighter about her. “It’s all right to feel topsy-turvy about your father, love. It’s all right.”
“He lied.”
“Yes. He did.”
