3. Mother knowingly ran off with a married man.

Edwin is surprised to learn that Rosalie isn’t certain which of these options is true. He is even more surprised to learn that Rosalie is leaning towards number three.

Among the children, Rosalie feels the scandal most deeply. How often has Mother said she has no secrets from Rosalie? Mother is such a liar. Shame spreads like a fever through Rosalie’s body, making her cheeks hot, her hands cold. She adds this to the many reasons she already has for not leaving the house.

Edwin’s own position will shift about over the years. Sometimes, like Asia, he will insist that his father’s one and only marriage was to his mother. Sometimes, like Rosalie, he will acknowledge Adelaide’s prior claim, though dismissing her as an adventuress, thirty-two years his father’s elder (she was, in fact, four years older). Asia saw her once, he will say. I never did.

This is a good reminder that no one in the world is a reliable source for their own story.

Lincoln and the Merry-Begotten

During the ride he spoke, for the first time in my hearing, of his mother, dwelling on her characteristics, and mentioning or enumerating what qualities he inherited from her. He said, among other things, that she was the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and a well-bred Virginia farmer or planter; and he argued that from this last source came his power of analysis, his logic, his mental activity, his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from the other members and descendants of the Hanks family. His theory in discussing the matter of hereditary traits had been, that, for certain reasons, illegitimate children are oftentimes sturdier and brighter than those born in lawful wedlock . . .

—J. L. Scripps, interview with Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln’s mother had died of milk sickness back when he was nine years old and his sister, Sarah, eleven. The family had then been living in southern Indiana. Up to this point, the hardships of Lincoln’s life were, for the times, quite ordinary—occasional beatings, hunger, a remote and unappeasable father, endless toil, and all the perils of the wilderness. His mother’s love had made his life tolerable. And then she was gone and he, at nine years old, helping make her coffin.

Fourteen months after her death, Thomas Lincoln left his children to travel to Kentucky to fetch home a new wife. He was absent so long, Abe and Sarah decided he must have died. A neighbor described them as all but nude, their clothing rotting away. They were lice-ridden, starving.

When the new stepmother arrived, she was shocked by what she found. The children were immediately cleaned, clothed, and fed. In a matter of weeks, the cabin had windows, a floor, tables, and chairs. She was good at making things better.