“It’s back at the inn.”

“Would you bring it with you next time? Would you let me see it?”

“Of course.” I can’t help but smile. I’m hoping this means my days of waiting alone in the visitors’ lounge are over.

The next day I do in fact bring Da’s word book. I enjoy watching Candace look at my father’s neat script and read aloud the words he found interesting and didn’t want to forget. We laugh over some of them, like flatulence, which my father had described as meaning those nasty pops of stink out the arse, and uppity, which he defined as bigheaded folks apt to scrape their noses on the ceiling. When Candace comes across the word redamancy, which Da had defined as loving someone deeply and having that love returned in full, she looks up at me from the page.

“That first day, when you told me who you were, you said that you didn’t care that you’d married a man you didn’t love because you’d given your heart before and it had been crushed.”

I look down at my father’s handwriting, the comforting swirls and flourishes of the ink. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

Kat is a few feet away working a puzzle that I bought at a five-and-ten in town—one hundred intricate pieces—and she is thoughtfully engaged in her task.

I decide in that moment that I will tell Candace a portion of what I never tell anyone. I want her to know that I understand what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you thought you could trust. I want her to know that I know some of the hard road she’s had to travel.

“There was a young man in my village,” I begin. “A fisherman like his father and grandfather and brother. He was more a friend of Mason’s than mine, but I fancied him. He was tall and strong and all the girls in the village had their eye on him. Da hadn’t thought much of Colm. He wanted me to marry someone genteel and educated, a learned man. Colm wasn’t like that. But Da was already gone when Colm started showing interest in me, coming round the cottage to visit, bringing Mam and me choice catches of fish, telling me I was pretty. Mam and I were struggling to get by, and when Colm asked me to marry him a few months before my eighteenth birthday, I said yes. Mam didn’t try to talk me out of it even though she knew if Da were alive he’d say no. She thought at least I would have plenty to eat, married to a fisherman, and she wouldn’t have to worry about how cold the house got at night, because she would be the only one in it. And I thought by marrying Colm I could make sure she had plenty to eat, too. I said yes partly for her, and she did the same thing.”

“But you loved him?”

“I thought I did. I think it was more that I loved that he chose me, that of all the girls in the village he chose me.”