“He’ll find a way to work in a stop at the hardware store, too, I’m sure.”

It galled Vivian how easygoing Edward had been about all this. While she’d been tied up in knots, he’d just gone about his daily business, work, errands, Freemason meetings, as if this had all been no more of an issue than if he’d forgotten to take out the trash. Mildred Fischer was the trash, Vivian thought, and the trash had been taken out this morning. Before their marriage ceremony, Edward had signed a document confirming his divorce from Mildred, so that was done. Oh, whoopsies, I forgot I had another wife. That was his story.

“Do you want me to come over?” Violet asked.

“No, thanks, honey. I’m a little tired. I think I might go lie down,” she said as she rose from the spot on the sofa she’d been sitting in for the past fifteen minutes. “Could you do me a favor, and call Henry and Will and tell them, and make sure you tell them I’m happy about everything, okay?”

“Vivy, does this remind you of Pawpy?”

Vivian didn’t answer right away, but her shoulders slumped.

“The letters, I mean.”

“I know what you meant.” Vivian heaved what must have been her hundredth sigh of the day, and looked back at the sofa that now had a Vivian-shaped indentation. She took a few steps to the wall, then leaned heavily against it and slowly slid down, curling her legs against herself when she reached the floor.

Vivian didn’t know if her father had written all three letters at the same time, but he must’ve mailed them at the same time. Those three love letters the “wickedly charming Irish rogue” Patrick McGinty had written to three different women, while he was married to her mother. At least one of the letters had been for her mother. That’d been a small consolation.

Vivian guessed he’d written the love letters at the same time, but then must’ve been careless and accidentally put each letter into the wrong envelope. It couldn’t have gone any worse if Laurel and Hardy had been postmasters. Each of the three women got a letter that was supposed to go to one of the other ones. “Dear Myrtie” went to Adelia Harvey, and “Dear Adelia” went to Grace Cady, meaning that “Dear Grace” went to Paddy’s wife, Mrs. Myrtle McGinty, and no matter how she read it, there just wasn’t any way that letter had been meant for her. Her name wasn’t Grace. And when Myrtle McGinty read the entire letter and saw the signature was her Paddy’s signature, things went very wrong.

Don’t get caught, he’d told Vivian about her eavesdropping. Keep those secrets to yourself. Oh, Pawpy. The betrayal felt personal, like he’d betrayed the whole family, not just their mother.

Just don’t get caught.

Who were those other women? Apparently, as far as Pawpy was concerned, they were all just part of the great freedom he had working on the railroad. Some of what “this great country had to offer,” was how he’d put it.