I love Kat, I do. But who am I to think I should be the one to mother her after Candace passes?

Candace shifts her gaze back to me. “Lucinda said they are willing to raise her,” she whispers.

I nod but do not trust myself to say, I heard you.

“She didn’t say they are wanting to, though. I fear they are merely offering what family should offer.”

“Don’t go,” I blurt, surprising myself with how these two words explode off my tongue. “Please, don’t take her there.”

Candace stares at me for a moment. “She’s my daughter,” she says quietly but with authority.

“I know she is. But she . . . she loves her little sister so much. I know that might be hard for you to imagine because of who Sarah is, but Kat loves her just the same. She would never see her again if you took her to Texas. And Kat . . . Kat loves me, too, Candace. I’m so sorry if that’s hard to hear, but she does. And I love her. Doesn’t love make a home? Doesn’t love make a family? She’s been through so much in her young life. I’m the only one besides you who knows just how much she’s had to shoulder. Your cousin doesn’t know. Your cousin would never know!”

The tears continue to fall, and I blot them with my sleeve.

Candace is staring hard at me. “You would have me hand over my child to you while I am still living? You would have me go to Texas without her?”

“No! No, I would not have you do that.”

“I cannot have her stay here with you in that hotel for who knows how long. A hotel is not a home.”

“I’m not asking you to do that, either.”

“Then what would you have me do?”

I lean forward and reach for one of her bone-thin hands. “Kat wants us to all be together—you, me, her baby sister, and Belinda. She told me this in the carriage a few days ago.”

Candace furrows an eyebrow. “She said that?”

“In her own way, yes. She said she wanted to go home and she mentioned all of us being there, including you, wherever that home may be. She knows it’s not here in Tucson. She’s knows it’s not in San Francisco. I think she means the inn in San Rafaela where Belinda and Sarah are.”

Candace stares at me, shakes her head slightly. “I don’t understand what you are suggesting.”

“We are the people who she loves, Candace. We are the people that make up her home, her world. It’s a fragile world, but it’s the only one she has, and she is just learning to trust it again. I would have you come to San Rafaela and live with us at the Loralei. I would have you spend your remaining days, however many you are destined to have, in that beautiful place surrounded by people who will care for you and your daughter; people who want to be in Kat’s life and who are not just merely willing to be. I would have you know that when you breathe your last your daughter will have everything you want for her. It’s what Kat wants. She wants us all to be together.”