Night has fallen soft and ghostly when we emerge from the courthouse. Swaths of denser fog now hug the streetlamps and obscure the sky like a never-ending bridal train. We climb back into the waiting carriage.

Martin is again quiet as we ride. The silence doesn’t seem to fit the occasion, even one as unusual as ours. I clear my throat. “Thank you for allowing that photographer to take our portrait.”

Martin turns his gaze from the window to look at me. “You’re welcome.”

“So . . . are you sure you don’t want to send a photograph back home to your parents as well?” I am wondering if he, like me, is hesitant to inform his family of what he’s just done. When he doesn’t answer me, I add, “I understand if you’re anxious about telling your parents. I . . . I actually feel the same way about telling my mam.”

He hesitates a moment. “My parents died when I was little,” he finally replies, his tone betraying nothing of what it might’ve felt like to say those words to me. “I was raised by an aunt and uncle back east. We’re not close.”

My heart instantly aches a little for him. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he says easily. “I don’t remember my parents.”

“Still, I’m sure it was very difficult for you losing your parents so young like that. How did it happen?”

“They were coming home from an event in the city but were caught in a blizzard no one knew was coming. They lost their way and froze to death in their carriage.”

“Oh, Martin.”

“That was a long time ago. I don’t think about it anymore.”

I wonder if this man has spent his whole lifetime telling himself it was just a small thing that he grew up without his mother and father. How does someone school himself to believe losing parents at such a young age doesn’t matter? I can’t imagine it. I lost my father when I was sixteen and it was nearly my undoing. I wait a moment to see if Martin will query me about my own parents.

“My mam likely won’t approve,” I say when he doesn’t. “I’m not sure what my father would’ve thought.” I turn my head to look out the window. I see only mist and other carriages and the hulking shapes of buildings in the undulating fog. “He probably would’ve said it was imprudent or preposterous, what I’ve just done. My da liked using fancy words. He collected them in a book like some people collect old coins. He wanted to go to university and become a professor, but there was no money for that. He became a roofer just like his father had been. But he taught himself what he could on his own. He was always borrowing books from the rich people in the village who had libraries. He’d read the books out loud to me and my brothers, and he’d find so many words he wanted to remember. He wrote them in a little ledger. He fell from a roof a few years ago. He never woke up from the fall and died a few days later. He was such a gentle soul.” I turn to face Martin, my mouth suddenly agape. I hadn’t intended to share that much with him. I don’t know why I did.