I try to keep my tone cheerful as I tell Kat before we head downstairs for breakfast half an hour later that today we will at last be on our way to see her mama. She has not said but a word or two since the tent at Golden Gate Park, and when I tell her this now I am met with silence. But I see in her eyes a mix of conflicting thoughts. She loves little Sarah, that is obvious, and I even think she loves me. Part of her wants to stay here; part of her wants to see her mother. Her heart is painfully torn in two, and it occurs to me that surely it has been a long time since this poor child has been truly happy. Maybe she can’t even remember the last time she was truly happy. I think back to Candace’s letter and how she wrote that she’d not been a good mother to Kat when she had the chance. I recall her writing that she took the losses of her infant sons far too hard and I wonder if Candace was neglectful, withdrawn, or impassive toward her daughter. Did she withhold love from Kat the way I know Martin did, the way her grandparents apparently did? Martin told me Candace had been sick for a long while before she died, but I’m thinking now only half of that statement is true. She’d indeed been bedridden for months, but not before she died. It was rather before her father whisked her away to that sanatorium. Candace hadn’t been well enough to care for her daughter, nor had she the will to. This is why I ponder if there was ever a time when Kat remembers feeling loved and cherished. Perhaps with me she did. Perhaps with me she does. Perhaps she does not trust this love I have for her, because with everything that has been stolen from her, why should she?

And now I am taking her away from her half sister, who is precious to her.

“I know how jumbled you must feel inside.” I pull her to me as we sit on the bed. “I want to stay here, too. But your mama longs to see you, and I know you ache to see her, too. It’s all jumbled, isn’t it?”

Kat sighs lightly against my chest. She nods.

“I’ll find a way to come visit you,” I tell her. “I’ll bring Belinda and the baby, all right? We’ll all come. I’ll find a way. Don’t you worry about that.”

We stay there, saying nothing to each other, for a long while. It’s a heavenly moment for me nonetheless, sitting in silence with the child I love as close to me as my own skin.

At the breakfast table the mood is solemn. Belinda has obviously also grown fond of Kat and is sad to see her go, even though she has known her less than a week. When people are thrown into an abyss and together find their way out of it, they are not the same people. They are bound to one another ever after, linked together at the core of who they are because it was together that they escaped a terrible fate. It doesn’t seem like Kat and I met Belinda only last Tuesday. It seems we have always known her.