“You could say that.”

“And it turned out to be a terrible one?”

“Life in the tenements and the factory was very . . . difficult,” I reply. “After everything I’d already had to bear, Martin’s advertisement seemed quite inviting.”

“And his bed?”

I ponder this for a moment. “Colm was at times a gentle lover and at times a beast. But I wasn’t missing a man in that way. At some point I thought I would be ready again for the marriage bed and so I asked Martin from the very first if he would wait for affection to grow between us. He didn’t seem to care one way or the other. He didn’t even ask why.”

“Because he didn’t need you for that.”

“No. He didn’t. And then when I thought I was ready for such things, he didn’t put up a fuss. But he never kissed my mouth, never told me I was beautiful, never looked at me the next morning like he couldn’t wait to do again what we had done the night before. I realized in time he wasn’t ever going to love me. I had decided that having Kat was enough and that I didn’t need love from a man if I could have love from a child.”

“It’s not the same thing,” Candace says, almost scolding me.

“No. It’s not. But it’s as grand in its own way.”

She leans back into her pillows, satisfied. And I am glad.

I can see now she views me as perhaps a sister of sorts, rather than a contender.

I have told her the truth about who I am, and how I am like her, and it has bonded us.

It isn’t the whole truth, but my words included no lies.

23

A week passes in Tucson, and then another. Our days are the same from one sunrise to the next. Kat and I spend the mornings in town, sometimes reading or doing puzzles or taking a walk or plucking out notes on the piano in the hotel lobby. We spend the latter part of the afternoon with Candace.

At first Kat seems happy with our slow-paced daily routine. She is as relaxed as I have seen her in quite a while, and she has even started to grace us with a few words, here and there. Thankfully Candace does not make a big show when Kat answers one of her questions with her voice instead of a nod.

But as the hot yet tranquil days pile on, I nevertheless begin to sense a restlessness in Kat, a tendency to stare off into the distance as though she’s heard her name being called from somewhere far away. Candace notices it, too, after a few days and asks me out of Kat’s hearing if I think the child is remembering what happened on the stairs. But I don’t think that is what is occupying Kat’s thoughts. She seems a bit troubled in her spirit, true, but not anguished. It is something else, some other concern she has. I begin to wonder if she’s sensing that at some point she’s going to have to choose between her mother and me. Even if the real choice is made for her, which it likely will be, she will have to choose how she will accept it.