“And you were happy at first, weren’t you?” Candace says, and it’s not a question. She knows there was bliss in the beginning, because the same was true for her.

“I was. At first.”

I stop for a moment as I parcel out in my head what I will share with her and what I won’t, what I will allow myself to relive in front of her and what I won’t.

“When did you stop being happy?” she asks, when I don’t continue.

“When I realized he could be as violent as he was loving,” I answer. “Colm was a man of strong feelings, which means he could be extremely happy one moment and extremely unhappy the next. He did not take well to disappointment, and life is unfortunately full of disappointments.”

“Did he hurt you? Did he strike you?” Candace’s eyes are full of concern but also curiosity.

“He would throw things about when he was angry. Sometimes at me. Sometimes what he threw about were his fists.”

“Did you tell anyone?”

I shrug, as much to shake off the hard weight of these memories as to ask, What good would that have done? “Even if I told someone, how could that person have helped me? Colm was my husband.”

“So you just let him have his way?”

“I thought he would outgrow it. He was only a few years older than I was. I thought he would learn to bridle his anger and that he would learn to trust me. He couldn’t stand to have another man so much as wish me a good day, and I thought in time he would realize that it was my full intent to be faithful to him and that I didn’t see other men the way he thought men saw me. And I mistakenly thought that when I told him I was expecting a child, that would also soften him. But it didn’t.”

Candace is holding on to my every word, despite their awful weight. “What happened?” she asks, nearly breathless.

“I lost that baby much like you lost your first son,” I say, and that is all I will say. “My child came too soon.”

Candace’s eyes are rimmed with silver now. “Was he angry at you for losing the child?”

My silence at her question allows her to think that he was.

“Did you leave him?” she asks. “Is that why you came to America? To get away from him?”

“No. Sadly, he died.” My tone is flat and I cannot help it. “He had too much to drink one night on his boat and got clumsy. When it was discovered he had fallen overboard it was too late. He’d drowned.”

Candace seems to need a moment to take this in. And I am glad for the seconds of silence.

“Did you mourn him?” she finally asks.

“I mourned the death of a life I might’ve had,” I say. “If things had been different.”

“So you came to America to start a new life.”