Two

The steamship Reliance took Grace from The Dalles and its wide vista down the blue Columbia to Portland, a city of trees and stumps bustling like a would-be Chicago. The next morning, Grace boarded the North Coast Limited railway to Seattle where the train chugged north through tiny farms carved from the timber. She caught glimpses of Mount St. Helens and the magical Rainier and jagged snow-covered Cascades whose names she did not know. In the Seattle station, Grace stepped out to a magnificent arched building where women in straw hats handed out flyers reminding persons of her sex to vote. Imagine that!

With some effort, Grace found an automobile cab. As they drove through Seattle, she marveled at the bridges and sparkling lakes and tended gardens with pink blooming rhododendrons and lilacs ready to burst that lined the streets. What a different landscape from the now-distant ranches she’d worked on. Dropped off at the port, Grace bought tickets on the stern-wheeler Virginia, owned by the West Port Transportation company. Inside the ferry, she slipped exhausted onto the seat. She might enjoy the feel of sea spray on her face as the ferry glided between tree-covered islands with occasional glimpses of the open sea, but her feet hurt and she needed to finish a task she’d set for herself. When not gazing out the window at the lush landscape of the inland passage, watching light sparkle on her first view of the Pacific, or listening to the steamship’s hum, Grace read Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard’s book Fasting for the Cure of Disease. She unwrapped the last cheese sandwich Jenny had sent with her and munched as she read. She had to know as much as she could about this doctor and her treatments if she was going to be successful in bringing Rebecca home. One thing was certain: the woman had opinions. She didn’t like meat and claimed “overeating is the vice of the whole human race.” Grace could think of other things more despicable than overeating, like allowing women to go without food and children to go without their mothers.

The ferry stopped at several little islands on Puget Sound. She was told to listen to the steward call out “Colvos Passage,” for there she would find Olalla. She dozed, awoke, and finished the book Jenny had given her, putting it back inside her carpetbag. The doctor’s book posed a remarkable theory that all illness from colds to tuberculosis to toothaches could be cured by improving the digestive channels and “purifying the blood” through fasting. Patients were encouraged to begin their fasts by eating only bits of cornmeal and broth followed by tomato and maybe orange juice until they felt better. “Elimination through clyster syringe is also required daily or more often if the digestive system resists.” Enemas? Grace shivered. The woman wrote as though she knew all answers to all things, even quoting Milton’s Paradise Lost to support her reasoning. This was such a strange matter. How on earth would Grace be able to challenge such a strong woman, especially if Rebecca was under her spell?

The ferry docked and Grace picked up her bag and walked down the wooden plank. The height of the fir trees forced her to bend backward to see the sky between the treetops. She held her hat and turned slowly. What a humbling place this was, full of timber and ferns. Dusk approached before long, but the small shops remained open to serve the ferry arrivals.

“May I take your bag, miss? Do you have others?”

“Oh, yes. Please.” She handed her bag over to the man standing before a carriage with OLALLA HOTEL written on the side. A white horse with speckles let one leg bend in rest as it waited for the passengers to step up. Grace was the only one. A seagull swooped over her, landing to waddle toward the ferry. Grace had sent a letter making the reservation and was pleased with the hotel’s efficiency in collecting her. She nodded toward the trunk set at the top of the gangplank and then watched as the man walked up the wooden ramp to pick up her trunk. He wasn’t very tall, but his arms were thick as tree branches, and he tossed her trunk onto his back. When he returned to the carriage, loaded her trunk, and was about to help her step up, she said, “I’d like to visit the sanatorium. Is that on the way to the hotel?”

“The sanatorium?” He squinted, his eyes making a hummingbird-size glance over her slender frame. “Don’t know as you need such a place, if I might say so, miss. And it’s beyond the hotel. I operate the passenger boat what takes people there mornings and picks ’em up. Just returned before coming to get you.” The rowing and handling of luggage must account for the man’s upper-body strength. “You wouldn’t want to go over there now. Visitors don’t want to be there after dark. Fact is,” he leaned toward her and whispered, “they don’t like visitors to come there at all and I wouldn’t think you’d need to be a patient, if I might say so.”

“But friends help people heal. How odd that they wouldn’t like family to help with their cure.”

“Very strange goings-on there, miss. Some folks never leave—except for the autopsy.”

“Autopsy! You mean they’ve died there? Of what?”

“More dying than I’d like to think. The doctor often does her own autopsies so no one knows for certain what kills them; but me, I’d say they died of starvation. There’s a very wary line between fasting—like the doctor claims—and starvation.”

Grace’s heart throbbed at her temples and she felt her hands grow damp inside her gloves.

“But still people come, and when their families try to take them home, they say they’re being healed and won’t go.”

Just as Jennifer described her inability to convince Rebecca to leave.

Grace stepped up into the carriage and they left the dock. While she wanted to focus on Rebecca’s situation, she couldn’t set aside the beauty of this island place. They drove past goat farms and open fields of grasses with spots of standing water and black-and-white cows chewing their cuds. A wispy breeze brought a chill to Grace’s shoulders and she pulled her shawl a little tighter around her shoulders. As they approached the village, she could see people weeding in their vegetable gardens, their planted flowers acting as colorful borders between carrots and the dark forests beyond. Olalla was really quite lovely. It reminded her of paintings of Scotland she’d viewed in art museums in New York. They passed a small church and then entered the village, where the carriage pulled up next to a two-story hotel that promised comfort.

A tall man—well, most men were tall against her five-foot-three-inch frame—came down the steps, took the reins, nodded to the driver, and tied the carriage at the hitching post. Then he helped the driver with her trunk, as adept with the luggage as her driver had been. Grace followed him inside as he slid the trunk from his shoulders, setting it down near the hotel desk. He tipped his hat at her.

“Thank you. The kindness of strangers is always welcome.” Grace nodded to the man.

“Miss.” He removed his hat then, holding it to his chest, just as a buckaroo would do. Not a dark Stetson—a homburg, instead—but a gesture as crisp as if it were a western style. The act and the gaze of his hazel eyes brought a humming sensation to her chest that surprised her and warmed her skin. A smile creased his wide face, not a handsome face exactly, but intriguing, with trimmed hair the color of roast beef and matching arched eyebrows that reminded her of Beethoven’s in a portrait she’d seen. “Happy to be of service to you, Miss . . .”

“Hathaway. Grace Hathaway.” Why was her heart fluttering? She could barely catch her breath.

“I’m . . . Claude Millikan. A pleasure to meet you.” He had a voice like a cello, deep and soothing, and she thought his hesitation before giving his God-given name was sweet. “Please.” He motioned for her to step up to the desk before him, and she told the clerk her name. She was aware he stood at her side, ran his hand through wavy hair before returning his hat to his head. She smelled a kind of musk, not unpleasant, emanating from him. She glanced at him when the clerk turned to reach for her key, and Mr. Claude Millikan was staring at her, one elbow leaned against the high desk. Admiration moved upon his face that brought her eyes back to the clerk. She hoped he couldn’t see how her face warmed, and she was glad she wore a high collar. Her neck often blotched pink as a poached salmon when she was nervous or embarrassed.

“Here we are.” The clerk handed her the key. “I’ll have William take your trunk up for you.”

“Thank you. And what time is dinner served in the dining room, please?”

“Six p.m. until eight o’clock. We have fresh sea bass for you this evening.”

“I’ve never had such a thing.”

“With a sauce of berries, the very namesake of Olalla.”

“How enchanting.”

“Perhaps you’d care to share a table with me, Miss Hathaway?” Mr. Millikan spoke, straightened, his hat back over his chest.

“I . . . well, I’ve only just arrived. I’m not sure.”

“I like a late dinnertime myself.”

“Yes. Well . . .”

“Shall we say seven thirty then?”

Why not? She was her own person. And he was quite pleasant to look at and obviously kind, as he’d helped the driver bring in her luggage, something he needn’t have done. They’d be in a public place and it might in fact be more respectable for her to be in a restaurant with an escort rather than eating alone.

“Yes. Seven thirty will be fine. Thank you.”

“I look forward to it.”

William picked up her trunk then and began the climb of the stairs to the right of the desk. Grace followed him, conscious of Mr. Millikan’s large presence still in the room, his eyes perhaps even following her. She was feeling quite delighted at having a dinner date as Mr. Millikan asked for his key.

“Certainly, Dr. Millikan,” the clerk said.

Doctor? Grace halted. Why hadn’t he said so? Grace turned, her hand gripped the stair railing. Perhaps she could confer with him about the fasting treatment of this Dr. Hazzard. This dinner might not only be entertaining but informative. She smiled as she took another step up, then gasped as she heard the clerk say, “And how are things at the sanatorium, Doctor? Are people still wasting their illnesses away?”

“Most definitely. But then no day is wasted under the care of Dr. Hazzard, as her patients would say.”