Belinda turns to face me. “About my family. The property. At first I thought maybe he was trying to see if I would consider selling the Loralei. I told him I wouldn’t, but he said he was interested in knowing why my family chose San Rafaela to make a home. He said knowing the reason would help him advise the investors.”

“And so what did you tell him?”

“That my grandparents came out to California when my father was just a boy, during the last year of the gold rush. My grandfather bought the property to build the inn because it was situated on the road to San Francisco and because there was an old mine at the far end that someone had long ago staked a claim upon but which had never yielded anything. My grandfather liked the novelty of that.”

My ears prick at this. “A gold mine? There’s a gold mine on this property?”

“It’s abandoned, though. There’s no gold in it. My grandfather and father poked about in it for years. They never found anything. And no one goes in it anymore. My father died in that mine. I hate it. I’ve always hated it. It was always dark and cold and full of bats. I thought the mine was dangerous. And in the end, it was. I was at the entrance when my father died; he’d wanted to show me something inside it and I didn’t want to go in. I heard him cry out when he stumbled and fell. I will never forget that sound.”

“And you told Martin all of this?”

“He is not Martin to me.”

I say nothing and after a moment Belinda continues.

“He told me things about himself, too. It wasn’t just me doing all the talking. He told me about life in San Francisco, where he had a room at a boardinghouse, about all the theaters and museums and restaurants. He told me that, even though he loved the city, he grew up on a cattle ranch in Colorado and that he missed it.”

“Wait. He told you his parents had a cattle ranch?”

“Yes. Why?”

“He told me his parents were killed in a carriage accident back east when he was six, and that the aunt and uncle who took him in were cruel to him. He said it was a cattle rancher in Colorado who’d given him his first job and changed his life.”

“Which story is true?” Belinda asks, though surely she doesn’t think I know the answer. Either tale could be true. Or neither.

“It doesn’t matter right now,” I reply. “What else did he say about his family?”

“That his mother died of influenza when he was eighteen, and an older sister died in a riding accident the following year. His father passed away not long after that of a heart attack. He told me he sold the family ranch and moved to California to start a new life.”

We are both quiet for a moment as our tea grows cool and we ponder what we thought was true of the man we’d married, and what are likely lies.