Be sensible, she told herself. You are always sensible.
She settled back into her seat on the northbound train and turned her attention to the landscape once more. Such openness and abundance refuted the very existence of shadowy avengers. And she was going home.
Home. Der Haven, she’d named it… the Haven. A simple farm backed up against a wooded hill at the very top of the valley, surrounded by the last of her uncle’s vineyards. A place of refuge for the small collection of former patients she and her father had brought with them from Pennsylvania two years ago. They were all that remained of the inmates of Dr. Wilhelm Schell’s unorthodox private asylum—the patients with nowhere to go, no one to trust but the physicians who’d cared for them.
Dr. Schell the elder was no longer capable of caring even for himself much of the time. The apoplexy that had struck him down so tragically had curtailed his vigorous movements and the sharp brilliance of his mind. He needed the Haven as much as the others did. It was Johanna’s charge to keep the place functioning, its residents content.
And to heal them, if she could. The need to heal was an essential part of her nature, and it made the responsibility worthwhile.
The train left Napa City and passed several small villages, their tiny depots strung along the rail line and its parallel road like knots on a rope: Yountville and Oakville, Rutherford and St. Helena, Bale and Walnut Grove. Gradually the valley narrowed and the hills to either side grew higher, clothed now in brush and trees. The vineyards that were beginning to attract so much interest appeared more frequently, each gnarled grapevine was thick with green leaves and hung with ripening clusters of fruit.
The grapes were very much like people, Johanna thought. Each variety took its own time in ripening, and had to be coaxed along by the vintner. Some were simply more fragile than others.
She blinked at her romantic turn of mind. Quite impractical, such thoughts. But they kept her from thinking about last night, or Peter’s ultimate fate, or how well Papa and the others had gotten along without her. If not for the chance to hear an eminent neurologist lecture in San Francisco, she could not have brought herself to leave. But Mrs. Daugherty could be relied upon to look after the Haven for a day or two. Of all the people in the town of Silverado Springs, she was least bothered by the “loonies” who lived with the crazy woman doctor. And she needed the money.
Money. Johanna clasped her hands in her lap. That, too, was never far from her thoughts. When she’d brought her father and the others to California, her uncle’s inheritance had been a godsend. Upon his death, Rutger Schell had left his brother the greater portion of his unsold vineyards at the head of the valley, a sizeable house, a fruit orchard, and several acres of wooded hillside. It had seemed sufficient to keep them all comfortable for many years.
But Johanna had miscalculated. Without families paying for the support of patients, without her father’s practice, the money went too quickly. First she had sold the outlying vineyards, then the ones closer to the house. Now only the orchard, two acres of vines, and the woods remained. She had little else to sell. They grew much of their own food, but some they had to buy. And there were other necessities.
She smoothed her worn skirts and rejected the self-pity of a sigh. She would simply have to find a solution to the money problem… or trust that one would appear in time, as Uncle Rutger’s inheritance had come so providentially just after Papa’s attack.
Finding the landscape an inadequate distraction, Johanna removed one of the European journals from her valise, unfolded her spectacles, and began to read. Charles Richet’s work—quite fascinating, though she could see he was missing the profound healing potential in the new science of hypnosis…
A light touch on her shoulder woke her from her trance.
“Silverado Springs, ma’am,” the conductor said, tipping his hat. “Last stop.”
“Of course. Thank you.” Johanna smiled and tucked the book back in her valise. She was the last passenger to leave the train. No one had evinced much interest in a plain, spinsterish woman* absorbed in a massive volume, and that suited her very well.