“I cannot have her stay here with you in that hotel for who knows how long. A hotel is not a home.”
“I’m not asking you to do that, either.”
“Then what would you have me do?”
I lean forward and reach for one of her bone-thin hands. “Kat wants us to all be together—you, me, her baby sister, and Belinda. She told me this in the carriage a few days ago.”
Candace furrows an eyebrow. “She said that?”
“In her own way, yes. She said she wanted to go home and she mentioned all of us being there, including you, wherever that home may be. She knows it’s not here in Tucson. She’s knows it’s not in San Francisco. I think she means the inn in San Rafaela where Belinda and Sarah are.”
Candace stares at me, shakes her head slightly. “I don’t understand what you are suggesting.”
“We are the people who she loves, Candace. We are the people that make up her home, her world. It’s a fragile world, but it’s the only one she has, and she is just learning to trust it again. I would have you come to San Rafaela and live with us at the Loralei. I would have you spend your remaining days, however many you are destined to have, in that beautiful place surrounded by peoplewho will care for you and your daughter; people who want to be in Kat’s life and who are not just merely willing to be. I would have you know that when you breathe your last your daughter will have everything you want for her. It’s what Kat wants. She wants us all to be together.”
Candace’s eyes have turned silver just imagining being in a place of beauty, but the imperfection of this plan is so clear. “You know what you are asking of me,” she whispers, staring at me with her hollowed eyes.
I nod. I do know. San Rafaela is not Tucson. The air on the Pacific coast is not oven hot; it is cool and fragrant and sometimes the morning fog is as moist and damp as a blanket made of rain. It is not the place for someone with consumption.
I squeeze her hand. “If your doctor thinks your condition is indeed worsening, even here, then where do you want to spend the rest of your mortal life?” I ask. “I know where I would want to spend mine. And I know who will give Kat the kind of home you want her to have, not just for now but always.Iwill.”
Candace and I sit that way for several long minutes, I imploring her silently to ponder my audacious solution and she bravely considering it. I am most likely asking her to cut her life shorter than if she were to relocate to Texas, and if that isn’t enough, I’m asking her to trust me with the raising of her child.
“I need to think about this.” Candace withdraws her hand from mine. “I’m tired.”
As I rise from my chair, I can see that she is exhausted in every way. I have laid too much on her.
In the carriage back to the hotel, Kat is more withdrawn than she has been in several days, and I wonder if she heard some of Candace’s and my conversation. Even though she was absorbed inher artwork several yards away, there is nothing wrong with Kat’s hearing, and we were the only ones out on the patio today. Candace and I kept our voices low, but Kat might’ve heard enough to understand that life is full of difficult choices.
The next day when we return to Las Palomas, the nurse comes out to the reception area and tells me Mrs. Hocking would like to speak to her daughter alone for a little while. There is nothing I can say except that I shall wait.
Many minutes pass before the nurse returns and says that I am also now welcome out on the patio. When I reach Candace at her lounge, Kat is sitting in the chair that I often sit in and I see what appears to be a look of satisfaction on her young face. Candace looks weary today, and yet there is a look of contentment on her face as well.
“Kat and I would like to come live at the Loralei with you,” she says.
A smile spreads itself across my face and I go to them, scooping Kat onto my lap as I take the chair, and then I lean in to Candace as close as I dare. “When would you like to go?”
Candace surveys the monochrome landscape on the other side of the shade, and a bouncing tumbleweed skips by. “The sooner the better. I’ll have my lawyer make all the arrangements. It will only take a phone call. I’ll take care of it.”
As we head back to the inn, I want to ask Kat what she and her mother talked about those long minutes before I was brought back to them, but I’m not sure Kat will have the words to tell me, and in the end it doesn’t seem to matter.
“I’m so glad we’re all going home together,” I say instead.
Kat leans against me and nods.
“This is what you wanted, isn’t it, Kat? For us all to be in one house?”
“Yes,” she says. “Home.”
When we get back to town, I pop into the Western Union office to send Belinda a telegram letting her know that Kat and I are returning to the Loralei and that we are bringing Candace with us.
Two days later we board a train car that Candace has arranged to be solely ours so that no one need be worried about being exposed to tuberculosis. Despite being pale and wearing a lace mask, Candace looks beautiful in a lemon-yellow shirtwaist trimmed in yards of white lace. She has had her hair professionally coiffed, and while she leans heavily on me as we make our way across the platform, she still looks every inch a well-bred woman of influence.
Not long after we settle in to our well-appointed private car, the train begins to ease away from the depot, and toward everything that lies beyond the desert’s blistering reach.
24
When we arrive at the San Mateo train station two days later, Belinda, Elliot, and the baby are there to greet us. It is such a happy reunion and, oh, the sweet changes in baby Sarah in the month that Kat and I have been gone. She is smiling and cooing and it’s hard to believe Martin had a part in creating something so wonderful.
