When he saw his father, though, he dropped the stick and came to sit beside him, swinging his feet. They sat together for a bit, just listening to the buzz of cicadas and the shouts of fishmongers from a distant pier.

“Dad,” Jem said, diffident.

“Aye?”

“Will you be different? After you get ordained?” Jem looked up at this, worry pinching the corners of his wide, soft mouth. God, he looks like Bree.

“No, mate,” Roger said. “I’ll always be your dad, no matter what. And I’ll still be just me,” he added, as an afterthought.

“Oh. Well, I didn’t think ye’d stop, exactly …” A smile touched Jem’s face like a stray sunbeam. “It’s only … what’s different? Because if nothing’s different—why do you want to do it? Why is it important?”

“Ah.” Roger leaned back a little, hands on his knees. The truth was that he rather expected to be different in some indefinable way, even though he also knew with certainty that he’d be the same.

“Well,” he said slowly, “part of it is that it’s formal. You ken Mairi and Archie MacLean back home at the Ridge, aye?”

“Aye.” Jem was eyeing him dubiously, wondering if this was going to make sense. Roger wondered that, too, but it was a legitimate question—and one that he thought might need answering more than once.

“Well, see, we had their wedding at Easter, but they came to it with their wee son, who was born in the autumn of last year. So they’d been living as man and wife for more than a year, even though they weren’t married.”

“Were they no handfast?” Jem’s brow wrinkled, trying to recollect.

“Aye, they were. That’s sort of my point. They made a contract with each other when they became handfast. Ye understand contracts?”

“Oh, aye. Grandda showed me the land deed the old governor gave him for the Ridge, and he explained why that was a contract. Two … er … parties? I think that’s what he said. The parties promise each other something and sign their names to it.”

“Ye’ve got it.” Roger smiled and was happy to get a smile back in return. “So then. Mairi and Archie had that contract, though it wasn’t written down, and what it said—have ye seen anyone get handfast? No? Well, when two people are handfast, they promise to live together as man and wife for a year and a day, and to—do the things a man and wife do, in the way of taking care of each other. And that’s a contract between them. But … when the year and a day are up, then they can decide if they want to go on living as man and wife or if they can’t abide each other and want to go their separate ways.

“So if they want to stay with each other … they do, but if there’s a minister at hand to marry them, they do that, and it’s the same sort of contract, but more … detailed … and it’s permanent. They promise to stay married.”