If Pat and I were to marry now, we would have a photograph taken. Mr. Anderson did on his wedding day. He stood proud with his young wife. She wore all white, as brides prefer to do these days. Nothing secondhand on that gal, I can tell you. She wouldn’t think of it. Charlotte and Mr. Cleneay wouldn’t think of it either, only the finer things for their Alma, their third child and only daughter. Three more boys followed her. Five brothers Alma has in all. Males do run in the Cleneay family. The first half of her name was a nod to my own. The second half was for Mary, Charlotte’s mother, who didn’t survive the state of Kentucky.

Even without a photograph, I would have a marriage license and a certificate of marriage as proof, Mr. Anderson told me. I’ve seen the certificate once, I told him, when Charlotte and Mrs. Field placed their Xs on it. As for that marriage license, Mr. Pat showed it to me before we married and that was the only time that I had laid eyes on it. Maybe Mr. Pat stuffed those papers in his traveling case, along with that rose platter, I said to Mr. Anderson. I could tell from the set of his jaw that Mr. Anderson didn’t find any humor in—

No, Miss, Mr. Anderson didn’t call him “Mr. Pat.” How could he, when the two of them had never met?

I misspoke. It’s been a long morning. When you’re at my time in life, names do come and go, Miss.

Mr. Anderson says that a copy of that license would be on file at the city courthouse, but that there was a fire there and my marriage papers, as well as a whole lot of other people’s, were all lost to the flames. Mr. Anderson says that once my story is told on the pages of the Enquirer, we will go to the Probate Court, show it to the chief clerk, and ask that the record of my marriage to Mr. Pat be “restored.” If a license was the only proof of a marriage, then a whole lot of people in Cincinnati should know that they’ve been living in sin is what I say.

You should write that down, Miss.

For now, that note in your hand is my proof. So are these.

Here, I’ve five coffee tins full of them. I’ve kept every note that Pat’s ever drawn for me. You can see that the early ones from Mrs. Haslam’s were stained with coffee rings.

To see these bits of paper with their doves and their ravens for what they are, you would have to know my story. Isn’t that right, Miss?