As we head back to the inn, I want to ask Kat what she and her mother talked about those long minutes before I was brought back to them, but I’m not sure Kat will have the words to tell me, and in the end it doesn’t seem to matter.

“I’m so glad we’re all going home together,” I say instead.

Kat leans against me and nods.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it, Kat? For us all to be in one house?”

“Yes,” she says. “Home.”

When we get back to town, I pop into the Western Union office to send Belinda a telegram letting her know that Kat and I are returning to the Loralei and that we are bringing Candace with us.

Two days later we board a train car that Candace has arranged to be solely ours so that no one need be worried about being exposed to tuberculosis. Despite being pale and wearing a lace mask, Candace looks beautiful in a lemon-yellow shirtwaist trimmed in yards of white lace. She has had her hair professionally coiffed, and while she leans heavily on me as we make our way across the platform, she still looks every inch a well-bred woman of influence.

Not long after we settle in to our well-appointed private car, the train begins to ease away from the depot, and toward everything that lies beyond the desert’s blistering reach.

24

When we arrive at the San Mateo train station two days later, Belinda, Elliot, and the baby are there to greet us. It is such a happy reunion and, oh, the sweet changes in baby Sarah in the month that Kat and I have been gone. She is smiling and cooing and it’s hard to believe Martin had a part in creating something so wonderful.

Introducing Candace to Belinda is not as awkward as I thought it might be; the three of us have all traveled the same journey—along different paths, of course—and we’ve a kinship that strangely unites us. As we make our way home to the Loralei through the peaceful countryside, Candace keeps remarking how beautiful and green the view out the carriage window is. She is equally taken with the Loralei, as I’d hoped she would be. It is surely nothing like the fancy hotels she probably stayed in as a girl growing up in a wealthy family, but there is a quaint beauty at the Loralei that I would guess no opulent palace can match.

Belinda gives Candace her bedroom on the main floor. Belinda and Sarah join Kat and me on the second floor. Candace, Kat, and I are taking up three of the inn’s guestrooms and Candace insists on paying Belinda the room rate for all of them.

Belinda at first attempts to refuse, but Candace says, “The inn is your livelihood, and I must have a part in making this solution work for all of us. Let me have my part.”

Belinda relents.

Candace is exhausted by the time we unpack her things, and Belinda suggests she rest before dinner. But Candace does not want to be inside; she wants to be out by the garden under that peach tree. Elliot hauls out a sofa and positions it so that Candace can nap among the shady boughs and buzzing bees. The picture of her on that sofa with Kat sitting next to her on a blanket with Sarah in her lap is a beautiful image I know I will always remember.