“What if he did get out, though? What if he does come looking for us? For her?”
“He won’t. Why would he? I have all those documents. He can’t risk it. And, besides, he... he couldn’t have gotten out. Not the way he looked when I left him.”
I have to believe I am right about that. Martin is dead to me. Dead.
“So we just wait, then, for this to truly be over?” Belinda asks a moment later.
“I think we check in with the authorities from time to time to see if there’s any word on our husbands—you with the San Mateo County Sheriff and me with the San Francisco Police. That is what concerned wives would do if their husbands went missing. And while we wait, we get up each morning and take care of our children and the inn, and we go to bed each night. We live.”
All of us except for Candace.
When we get back to the Loralei, I have to wait until Kat is in bed to tell Candace what I told Belinda on the way home. I showher the shard I brought back with me. She reaches out with one hand to hold it.
“You think this is bone?” she says.
“Could be. Might be.”
“It’s lighter than I thought it would be,” she replies. And then she hands it back.
“What do you want me to do with it?” I ask. “He was your husband.”
“I don’t care. Bury it. Burn it. Throw it into the sea. I don’t care.”
The next day I make the long trek to the mine and I shove the shard in between two large boulders blocking the entrance. A fragment of the shard splits off and falls into the dirt. I grab a rock at my feet and hammer the shard farther in. Fragments continue to fly off, but I continue until the diminished shard is firmly embedded in between the boulders. I don’t tell the others what I’ve done when I return to the inn; I just tell Belinda and Candace that what I brought home from San Francisco has been properly disposed of.
A week later I use Elliot’s telephone and I ring up the San Francisco Police Department and ask to speak to Detective Morris. I ask if there is any news on the whereabouts of my husband. There isn’t.
Belinda rings the county sheriff and officially reports her husband as having deserted her. For the next month and a half we inquire about our missing husbands on a regular basis. In those six weeks Sarah grows cuter and fatter, Belinda looks less and less like a grieving widow and more like a woman in love with Elliot, and Kat begins to say a word or two every hour. As the weeks passI find that I no longer startle when an automobile pulls up outside the inn or when the door to the inn opens and the first thing I hear is a man’s footfall. Martin would be a fool to come back if he’s somehow still alive.
And Martin is no fool.
I write my mother that Martin—the quiet man I married for convenience—was sadly a victim of the terrible quake and fire, but that Kat and I are safe and now living south of the city with friends. I tell her that she needn’t worry about a thing, that everything she’d wanted me to have and sacrificed for me to have, I have.
Candace is the only one of us who seems to be waning rather than gaining strength. When the first day of August approaches, she calls me to her bed, which she rarely leaves now. She is as pale and thin as she was when I first met her, perhaps more so. We have had the doctor from the village to see her twice, and both times he has told us she needs to be sent to a warmer, drier climate. Both times Candace declined to follow his advice.
When I arrive at her bedside, she reaches for me with a weak arm and takes my hand. I sit down next to her.
“I want to go to my cousin’s in Texas,” she whispers.
The words hit me hard. “But... you said you wanted to be here! You said you wanted for you and Kat to be here. With me!”
“I do want Kat to be here with you,” she murmurs. “But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want Kat to watch me die. I want to say good-bye to her while I’m alive. I want her to remember me alive.”
Relief and concern immediately twist themselves inside me. Candace doesn’t want to take Kat. But still. How can she possibly travel in her condition? “You are too weak to go such a great distance by train, Candace.”
“I have the money to hire a private coach and a nurse.”
“But it’s so far and... and what if you die along the way?”
“What if I do? It would be a blessing to go so quickly. I want to go. I’m ready to go.”
“Candace—”
“Let me go to my family. Let them see to it that I’m buried next to my mother and father. Please, Sophie. I’ve asked you for nothing. Please help me to do this.”
Hot tears are sliding down my face. “But Kat...”
“Kat will be happy here. She already is happy here. She has you and Belinda and her sister. She already has more than I ever gave her. You can’t stop what is happening to me. I will die. Let me choose where.”
