“Where did he go, Auntie Viv?” Pamela asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“For nearly three years he wandered the Pacific. Tahiti and Samoa and the Hawaiian Islands. He became a good friend of King Kala-kaua.”
Pamela’s eyes were shining with excitement. “A real-life king? That’s what I want to do, sail the Pacific and meet kings and savages.”
Vivien stroked Pamela’s soft blond hair. “I have no doubt you will do all that and more,” she’d said.
Vivien had never seen mountains before. When she stepped off the train in Denver later that week, the sight of them made her weak. The Rocky Mountains loomed above the city, topped with snow even in spring, and appearing almost purple in the early morning light.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” a woman standing beside her said.
Pretty wasn’t the adjective that Vivien would use. Magnificent. Majestic. But she nodded to be polite.
“I came West in 1900, from Boston,” the woman continued. “To teach school. And I still remember stepping off the train here and seeing the Rockies. How they took my breath away.”
“You live here then?” Vivien said. The woman had dark hair coming loose from beneath her wide hat, and a long horsey face.
“I don’t anymore,” she said. “I left ten years ago for Oregon. You ever been to Oregon?”
Vivien shook her head.
“Now that’s God’s country,” she said. “We’ve got mountains too. And Douglas fir and redwoods and the Pacific. God’s country for sure.”
“I need to find the hospital.”
The woman grinned. “But I’m going to the hospital myself. We can share a taxi?” the woman continued. She was one of those people who didn’t require responses, Vivien thought.
Vivien followed her off the platform and into Union Station. In front of it sleek black cars were lined up, waiting for passengers.
“The Mizpah Arch,” the woman said, pointing to the beautiful stone arch that welcomed people to Denver.
“I didn’t expect such a sophisticated city,” Vivien admitted as they got into a taxi.
“We hosted the Democratic National Convention in ’08,” the woman said.
Her face had taken on a sadness Vivien took for nostalgia.
“The Mint,” the woman said, pointing out the window. “The Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception.” She sighed and settled deeper into the seat.
“So many trees,” Vivien said.
“One hundred and ten thousand to be exact,” the woman said. “Mayor Speer had them planted in his City Beautiful movement. That’s Speer’s Civic Center,” she added as they passed a large park.
“It sounds like you love it here,” Vivien said.
The woman nodded absently.
Vivien wondered why the woman had moved from this city that clearly moved her so much, but she was too polite to ask. She had left San Francisco because it was too painful to stay. People had their private reasons.
They turned onto West Colfax, a paved street lined with beautiful buildings and well-dressed men and women. Vivien shook her head. She had been imagining cowboys and cattle.
“Do you teach school in Oregon too?” Vivien asked.
“I cook in a lumber camp there,” the woman said.
“You’re quite an adventurer,” Vivien said, her voice catching on the word. She thought of Pamela, poor Pamela.
“I lived a dull life in Boston until I was twenty-five years old. When no one seemed to want to marry us, my girlfriend and I decided to head West. The land of opportunity, we thought.”
“Was it?” Vivien said.
“Abby died here, in childbirth. The man I married drowned, and they never recovered his body. So . . .”
“How terrible,” Vivien said. “I’m sorry.”
To her surprise, the woman smiled.
“But that’s why I’ve come back,” she said. From her purse she pulled out a folded newspaper clipping and handed it to Vivien. “See?”
Vivien recognized it as soon as she unfolded it. The man with amnesia.
“I think it’s my Jeremiah,” the woman said. “The description sounds just like him.”
“But what about the hotel key?” Vivien asked, her throat dry.
The woman shrugged. “Ten years of wandering around, lost. Maybe he went to San Francisco. Maybe he stayed at that hotel.”
Carefully, Vivien refolded the clipping.
She could feel the woman’s eyes on her.
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” the woman said.
“Yes.”
Their eyes met.
“Well,” the woman said finally. She put the clipping back in her purse and looked out the window.
For the rest of the ride to the hospital, neither of them spoke.