“Love from you?” Candace asks, and this time I cannot read her tone.

“Yes. I do love Kat. I love her as though she were my own child.”

“And yet you brought her to me.”

“She is your daughter, from your own body. And she knew you were alive. I’d be no better than Martin if I kept her from you.”

“So you brought her even though this disease I have will probably kill me?”

This gives me pause for a moment. “Especially because of that.”

Again we are quiet for a few moments.

“I know . . . I know she can’t stay here at the sanatorium with you,” I continue. “I had supposed your father would be here and that perhaps he would insist on taking her. I’m sorry for your loss. The nurse told me your father died recently.”

“Yes,” Candace says tonelessly.

“And as for Kat, she can stay with me in town for as long as you like. I have a little room at an inn near the train station. I can bring Kat in to see you every day that you are allowed visitors, if you want.”

“You would do that?” she asks, bemused disbelief cloaking her tone. “You would do that for a sick woman you don’t know?”

“I would do it for Kat. You’re her mother and she loves you. I know she does. She wanted so much to come to you.”

“I suppose that would suffice until I can make other arrangements.”

I clear my throat nervously and for no good reason. “You don’t have to make other arrangements. I am perfectly able and willing to care for her. Now and . . . later.”

Across from us, Kat stirs on the cushions. Candace and I say nothing else as we watch her awaken. She sits up on the makeshift bed and looks first to me in puzzlement and then to Candace, as though she’s just been dreaming and in that dream there was only one of us.

“Come, sweets,” I tell her. Kat climbs up off the cushions and comes to me, and again I pull her into my lap so that she can be as close to her mother as the illness will allow.

Candace reaches out a weary arm and lays it across Kat’s lap.

The unfinished conversation Candace and I were having hangs between us like a heavy chain, but we sit in the baking silence, a trio of wounded souls, until a nurse comes for Candace and tells her it is time for her rest before supper.

“Which inn are you staying at?” Candace asks as the nurse releases the brake on her lounge chair.

“The Desert Rose.”

She nods and then looks to Kat. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Kitty Kat. All right?”

Kat nods once.

And then Candace is wheeled away from us.

• • •

We ride in silence back to the inn. I want to ask Kat what she’s thinking, but I know she will not answer me. She does not seem upset to leave her mother after having been with her for only a little while, nor does she seem anxious about our plans to return to the sanatorium the next day. We eat a supper of roasted chicken, pinto beans, and warm tortillas at a restaurant across the street from the hotel, and then we head up to our room and spend an hour before bed looking at Da’s word book.