PARC DU MONT-ROYAL’S MAPLES HAVE PALED and a nearly full moon renders the heavens a heartbreaking indigo. George-Étienne Cartier’s angel raises silver arms over me as I tread the lawn, fumble in the gazebo, and find what has been deposited: paper wrapped around…is this a playing card? My eyesight’s not what it should be anymore. Neither my eyes nor my teeth are of the calibre one might reasonably hope to find in the head of a relatively young man.

Sophie, in the tent: “What have you been doing? Who did you see today? What’s that you’re shoving in your pocket?”

I quickly conceal the letter. I fear Sophie would not take kindly to my correspondence with Mrs. Waugh. For one thing, she’d be furious that I’ve exposed our existence here in the park to a journalist. Under the radar at all times, is where Sophie wants to live.

“What is it you’re hiding?”

“I’ve been…I was rereading my mother’s appeal…” I decide to refer to another letter, the one I keep on my person at all times, the sole correspondence from my mother that I still possess. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, that I need to get serious about my rightful pension, and I was…”

“The letter Madame Bee wrote to the department of Veterans Affairs? Hallelujah! Finally, a lucid document. Something that might yield monetary results!”

“Actually, it’s…”

“Pass it to me, will you? For God’s sake, how’s anyone to help you if you hoard documents until they fall to bits?”

Carefully, I extract my mother’s written plea from underneath Mrs. Waugh’s letter in my trousers. The two separate papers feel utterly different to the touch: one new and crisp with the mysterious card wrapped in it, the other soft and worn. It was tricky, but not impossible, to retrieve my mother’s plaintive words from the small maritime museum I visited near Westerham during my watermelon nightmare. Despite Mrs. Waugh’s horror when I showed her this same letter on the steps the day we met, I believe misplaced objects yearn to be returned to the hands of their rightful owners, that repossession is not theft.

“Be careful,” I tell Sophie as she unfolds the paper, whose every word I know even before she reads it aloud:

BATH, 22 FEBRUARY, 1761

Sir,

On reading your letter I could hardly believe my senses at the shamefull betrayal hinted at in the Conduct of the Ministry. Is it credible that my dear Son’s glorious death has raised up Enemies who in this fashion seek to strike at a defenceless Woman, his Mother, by with-holding his proper reward which is granted to every Officer of his Rank in his Majesty’s Service.

Does any one least of all his Majesty doubt that my Son was appointed by his late Majesty Commander in Chiefe?