Mr. Cleneay’s gift was a sugar-cured ham, which I prepared for our wedding dinner at their home.

Though I hadn’t told Charlotte, I had followed her advice. Before we married, I’d asked Pat for the story of his father, and it was almost as short as Rosa’s.

Charles was an army officer, Pat began, and a surgeon. He must have strongly disliked Ireland, his island of birth, as he chose to live far from it for most of his life. Before Charles reached the fifth decade of life, he died of malaria in a country called India, far from his home and far from his second family, Pat said.

“Did he have a side woman?” I whispered.

Charlotte, I knew, wouldn’t like the sound of a second family.

Pat repeated “side woman” slowly, as if he’d never heard of such a thing. Then he explained something to me that was far worse. He said that in his father’s religion a marriage could be made to never exist in the eyes of God.

“Your father’s religion made Rosa disappear?”

As a wife, yes, replied my husband-to-be.

Charlotte would have walked away at that point and never looked back. I didn’t because I believed that Pat wasn’t Charles and I wasn’t Rosa.

Pat’s father married anew and with his wife, who was not Rosa, he had three daughters.

“You’ve three half sisters, Pat? You’re not alone then,” I said, echoing one of his oft-repeated complaints, which came forward, one after the other, once he had a sip or two of whiskey. The missing island, the missing mother, the missing eye, the missing father, the missing byline, and soon enough there was just Pat, alone in Cincinnati.

No, I never took whiskey or strong drink, Miss, with Pat or without him.

I’ve seen what drink can do to a person. It made them happier or it made them sadder. Either way, it soon made them poorer, and I didn’t need any help with that.

Pat must have had no whiskey in his glass that night because he declared that he was not alone. He had a younger brother too, he said.

I’d asked Pat for the story of his father, and he gave me three half sisters and a little brother. I scolded him for hiding them until now. Pat was a terrible storyteller, and I told him so.

Pat looked up, his eye aglow. On the contrary, he said. He was a very good storyteller, as the listener clearly wanted to know more, which was the point of storytelling.

Pat lowered his head and said that when he was young, still playing with toy soldiers, a younger boy was brought into the manor house of the Old Lady—the one who smelled of camphor—and was introduced to him as his little brother, James Daniel Hearn. The Old Lady said that James Daniel and his nanny, Elesa, had just come to Dublin.