Meals were included with her room at the boarding house, but on Sundays Mrs. Wilson expected her guests to fend for themselves after breakfast, and to make their own meals using the contents of the pantry. Although there were four rooms to let, only two were currently occupied — Danica’s own, and another by a young woman named Clara DeWitt, who had come out west with her ailing mother in the hopes that the drier air would aid her mother’s tuberculosis. Mrs. DeWitt had succumbed after only a few months, unfortunately, but Clara remained, mostly because she didn’t have the funds to return to Ohio.
“Not that I’d really want to,” she’d told Danica the night before in a conspiratorial whisper as Mrs. Wilson left the dining room to bring in dessert. “Arizona Territory is so much more exciting.
