After a week or so of nods, Pat introduced himself to my back, as I stood at the sink, my arms elbow-deep in grease and water. I turned my face toward him and politely replied that I already knew his name. I addressed him as “Mr. Hearn,” and he shook his head, as if I’d given him the wrong answer to a question. I’d seen his cloudy eye by then, and it didn’t bother me one bit. His right eye was dark brown and lively, with lashes as long as my own, and I learned early on to look only at it. He agreed to be called “Mr. Patrick” that evening, but soon he was Pat to me. If Mrs. Haslam ever heard me calling a male boarder by his given name, I would have been let go faster than you could say “Pat.” That’s why I made sure to say his name soft, under my breath, like a secret or a prayer.

Pat soon called me “Mattie,” which he said was short for “Mattie de Maysville.” He was fond of giving names to people and places, though they already had them. “The Virgin Mother Hen” was what he called Mrs. Haslam, though he knew that she was a widow and childless. She did have a way of moving her head up and down, like a well-fed yardbird pecking at grain, when she spoke. He called Miss Caroline “Miss Silk Purse,” which he said was short for “Miss Silk Purse from a Sow’s Ear,” after I’d told him about her snowflake bundles. It was too good of a story to keep to myself. He wasn’t taken aback as I’d been. Miss Caroline was from Boston, he said, and her family had long been in the China trade, which explained the silk. The French lace he couldn’t explain.

Pat’s thick glasses—he never wore them in public—were his “eye can’t see!” He pointed at his left eye and then slapped his knees when he told me that one.

As for Mattie de Maysville, Pat said that de followed by the name of a place was how French noble people told the world where they were from. I stored that away to share with Charlotte. “You might know lace, but I know French,” I remember teasing her.

Maysville, Kentucky, was where I’d gone first, after Freedom. If you weren’t young or old, you were on the move back then. Most of us were walking north, east, or west. Those who headed south were searching for kin.