Again we are reminded of how we must look as we approach a gray-haired carriage driver for hire. His eyes widen a bit, just like everyone else’s have as we’ve walked through the station, but he seems to quickly figure out where we’ve come from.

“Fled the fires in San Francisco, did you?” he says when he takes the travel case from me.

“Yes,” I tell him, grateful not to have to explain anything.

“More of you have been coming this way yesterday and today. No trains out of the Townsend station, I hear,” he says as he assists Belinda onto the seat. “We had a bit of damage here, too. Not like you had, of course. The jail and the railroad freight depot over yonder came down, and the orphanage is a heap. All the young ones got out, though. City hall and the library are gone.”

“What about San Rafaela?” Belinda says. “Was it bad in San Rafaela?”

Good Lord, don’t let anything have happened to her inn, I mutter to myself. Not after everything else she’s lost.

“Well,” the driver says, “I hear people lost their chimneys and some folks’ houses wobbled off their groundings. No one died there, though, I don’t think. Is that where you’re headed?”

“Yes, please,” I tell him as I help Kat in and climb in beside her. “The Loralei Inn.”

We set off, making our way quickly out of the little city and into the countryside. We pass farms and orchards and country mansions that appear undamaged, at least from this distance. All is serene and calm, but I know Belinda is straining to see her home come into view.

San Rafaela is a small former mining town, with a mercantile, a feed store, a post office, a primary school, and a handful of other businesses on its single main street, and then houses large and small on side streets and out among groves of trees. After we pass the school, I see a carpentry shop and I wonder if it’s Elliot’s. Then off to our left is the road sign for the Loralei Inn. It’s painted white with tiny blue flowers and trailing vines and it’s swinging slightly on its hinges in a breeze. It’s not until we pass a huge sycamore blocking the full view that we can see that the structure is still standing.

Beside me, Belinda lets out the breath she’d been holding. I don’t think either one of us had considered that the earthquake might’ve wrecked the inn until we saw the damage in nearby San Mateo. I know without even asking her that the inn is more to her than just her livelihood, and I’m surprised anew that she has asked me to come live with her here. The inn is part stone and part wood; the stone no doubt played a role in its survival. The window frames are painted forest green and the rest of the trim and beams are polished redwood. It is three stories high and surrounded by trees except for a fenced patch of sunlight off to the side—Belinda’s herb garden. Two large clay pots of lobelia and white alyssum are stationed at the bottom of the porch stairs; one of them is cracked wide, a result of the quake, I am guessing.