No, not like his underthings, Miss. His drawers and under vests were never in such a sorry state, I can tell you that for certain.

The holes, as I was saying, were in Pat’s stories and often in the places where he had been. When I asked Pat where he was born, for instance, he said it was a place that no longer existed. For a lightning-strike moment, I thought he meant a plantation, which would account for the color of his skin—lighter than mine but far from Irish white, like Mr. Foley or his daughter. Pat could be putting on a lilt. So many of us were starting new after the war. Why not as a “Patrick Hearn”?

Lifting my chin, I prompted Pat to continue. As he began to tell his story, he lowered his head. That was his habit. He spoke to his lap. He spoke to the floor. He spoke to my back. If I looked at him, even when his eye was downcast, he would redden and stammer.

No, I can’t describe his left eye for you in detail, Miss. As I said, I didn’t see it.

No, Pat’s right eye didn’t bulge like a bullfrog’s. I can’t speak to what happened to it after he left Cincinnati.

No, Pat didn’t have a hunched back or a raised shoulder. He was hale of body when I knew him. Again, I can’t speak to what happened to him after Cincinnati.

No, Pat wasn’t a dwarf, Miss.

We were the same height, unless I had on my tan button boots with the heels, which I never did while I was at Mrs. Haslam’s because I didn’t own them then. He was surprised and not pleased when I wore them for the first time, which was on the day we married. That night, he found the boots and hid them from me. As if I wouldn’t notice that my first pair of fabric boots—I bought them secondhand, but Charlotte described them as “angel-worn” because their soles were barely scuffed—had gone missing? That foolishness didn’t last long. How Pat and I laughed and laughed when I found them inside his traveling case with a note tucked inside one of them. He’d drawn a dove flying high above a blackbird—he said it was a raven—and the dove had on a pair of button boots. The raven had a teardrop falling from its right eye.

You’re right, Miss. Pat did behave like a child. Most grown men do.