Elesa, thank God, your father was wise enough to make your travel to Santa Maura Island known to Mrs. Brenane before typhus took him. He joined your mother so soon after her passing. That is love, I remembered thinking when I saw their shared gravestone.

Dublin has taken your family from you, Elesa, but Lefkada town will give you one again. Though I wish the reasons for it were different, I am pleased that Mrs. Brenane has arranged for your company on this journey, my dear girl. My blessed third will be grateful for your company as well, if God wills a birth upon these waters.

Our own arrangement pleases me too, Elesa. It is a practical one, as all arrangements should be. You will have something in addition to your youth to contribute to your mother’s family in Lefkada town, and I will have a story for Patricio to read one day. He will want to know who brought him into this world and who took him from his island of birth. These pages will tell him, and he will come and find me, unless I am already with God.

It is my hope, Patricio, that you will forgive me. I will not say for my sins. To love is not a sin. Remember this, my son. The Catholic Church that you now worship within and the Orthodox Church that is my own will tell you differently. I, your mother, cannot love you more, my blessed second. I cannot love you more than to leave you.

God takes, and God gives.

When Old Iota understands the reasons for my return to Lefkada town, her practical nature will take over, and she will hurry off to find the butcher. He will locate a house for me and my blessed third. I will pay for it from the sum that Mrs. Brenane gave me, once I had placed my X on the paper that promised you to her, Patricio.

God willing, I will give birth to another boy, in a house in Lefkada town with Old Iota by my side, as I had done twice before. I will then ask you, Elesa, to write to Mrs. Brenane, who will call Patricio to her side.

She will say, “Patrick, your mother, who loves you, is safe, and she has given you a brother.” Your grandaunt, Patricio, will say this to you in English, the language that had already separated you, my blessed second, from me long before the waters of this Irish Sea.

Elizabeth Bisland: (1861–1929)

ELIZABETH BISLAND

(1861–1929)

. . . .

NEW YORK, 1906

A strange mingling of events and of race-forces had brought the boy into being.