“Here?” Paige asks, clearly entranced with this story. Apparently she knows as little family history as I do, judging by her excitement.

“In this house? No. It was a small thing, our house, almost falling down. Every Sunday he’d be outside nailing some boards somewhere, as if he put the whole thing together again.”

“Did you ever go out on the boat?”

“Oh yes. You don’t have two strapping sons without putting them to work. I spent most Saturday mornings on the boat with him.” His voice turns teasing. “Can’t eat lobster to this day. Have seen just about enough of them to suit me.”

She giggles. “Is that why you didn’t become a lobsterman?”

“No.” He looks toward the moon. “There were other reasons for that.”

“Sing more,” she says, tugging him back to the present.

And so he does, his low voice filling the room. It’s melodic and earthy, both a song to match the stride of work as well as a song to lull someone to sleep. “When I saw the light again, I knew it was a dream. But when the sky began to rain, there was the lighthouse gleam.”

He continues singing about a man lost at sea, wandering through the ocean, drunk on the salt-spray, delirious with dreams of finding land. Paige’s eyes flutter closed, and then open, and then closed again. Soon she becomes still in the way of sleep. It’s just as well that she doesn’t hear the ending to the song. The sailor never does find his way home.

Instead he’s swallowed by the sea.

As the last note drifts into silence, I stand up quietly and step out of the room.

Mr. Rochester joins me in the hallway and closes the door.

“That’s a sad song,” I whisper. We’re still standing two feet away from her room. I don’t want to wake her up again, but it feels like a night for confidences.

“It’s a sad life, fishing.”

“Is that why you didn’t become a lobsterman?”

“No, that’s not why. For a long time I thought that’s what I would do. And then I—” A soft laugh. “Well, isn’t it always this way? I fell in love with a woman.”

“She didn’t like lobsters.”

“She didn’t like being poor. So I set out to become rich.”

“It worked.” I’m not just saying that because he lives in a fancy house or pays a high salary to a nanny. I’m not only saying it because he mentioned selling a billion-dollar business. I looked him up after he asked if I had seen him in the news.

And sure enough, there are plenty of references about Beau Rochester.

“You looked me up,” he says.