“Are you sad?” she asks.

“A little,” I answer. “I was happy living there with you. Are you sad?”

Kat is quiet a moment. “A little.”

“But I am so very happy that even though the house might be gone, you and I are safe.”

“And Mama and Belinda and baby Sarah, too,” she adds, as though they had all been with us the whole time and I forgot to mention them.

I realize at this moment that what she’s missing is not so much the house itself but something else, something a fire cannot touch. It’s that sacred place where your soul is at rest because all the people you love most are there. I know the place. I knew it in Donaghadee, a long time ago, and I’ve stumbled upon it again, in my own strange way, with Kat.

“Yes.” I kiss the top of her head. “Mama and Belinda and baby Sarah, too.”

“But not Father,” she says, and I lift my head from hers with a slight start.

“What was that, love?” I say, and I can feel the calm of the previous moment bleeding away like water in a drain.

“Not Father.”

I want her to continue, to tell me what she means, but I don’t know how to coax thoughts out in a way that will keep her thinking of home and everything wonderful. I pull away just enough to be able to see her expression. She is staring at the floor of the carriage, a pensive look on her face.

I fold my arms tighter about her. “It’s all right to feel topsy-turvy about your father, love. It’s all right.”

“He lied.”

“Yes. He did.”

“He’s not nice.”

I lay my head against hers and a tear that I am very glad she cannot see falls on her hair. I say nothing.

“He went away?” Her tone is questioning, as though she requires assurance that a return to home does not equal a return to him.

“Yes. I think he’s gone. Maybe for a very long time. Maybe for always.” And because I do not want Kat to live a life of bitterness, I offer her the only advice I can in this moment. “Your father didn’t know how to love, sweets. He didn’t know. But you do. You do. Promise me that you will remember that whenever you think of him, Kat. He did not know the way of love. But you do. Promise me?”

She nods and says nothing more, not on the rest of the carriage ride and not for the rest of the day. But as we lie in our sweltering room that night I think of what she said to me about wanting home, and a solution presents itself to me. It is far from perfect, but this is not a perfect world, is it?

Even so, it is a solution I don’t have the courage yet to suggest. I must wait until the timing seems right.

By the end of the third week in Tucson, the calendar has leaned into mid-May and the scorching heat is feeling more and more like a hot poker needling at me to tell Candace my idea.