She looked up at Da. “Hold your horses, Peadar, sure the tea’ll be ready in a minute. Now, sit you down,” she said, smiling, “we’ve had a great surprise arrive: a letter all the way from America. And we’ve been waiting all day for you to come home and open it.”

Da looked suspiciously at the envelope and then at Ma. “’Tis addressed to yourself. Could you not have just opened it without all this oul’ palaver,” he said. “Or have ye forgot how to read?”

It was seldom Da spoke to Ma this way. In fact, it was seldom he spoke at all. The smile left Ma’s face. She snatched the envelope and ripped it open, muttering under her breath. I felt a bit sorry for her. She’d wanted to make a big ceremony out of this thing that was so out of the ordinary in our everyday lives, and now Da had thrown cold water all over it.

She took the flimsy letter out of the envelope and unfolded it, holding it in her rough, red fingers and mouthing the words to herself. When she was finished, she looked up at us with glassy eyes, as if she’d just witnessed a miracle.

“You’ll never believe this . . .” she began, and then stopped as she rummaged inside the envelope. She turned it upside down, and some foreign-looking bank notes tumbled out.

“Mother of God,” she breathed, “will you look at that!”

I wanted to shake her. “Will you ever put us out of our misery, Ma?” I shouted.

Even Da peered at her with sudden interest.

Ma took her time. She smiled at Da and then at me before she took a deep breath and began to speak.

“’Tis a letter from my niece’s husband. He says the poor girl died of the fever. Ah, may God rest her soul. She’d have been older than yourself, but too young to die. She was the only child of my oldest sister and that blackguard she married named Sullivan. I didn’t know her that well, because Sullivan moved the family to America when Mary was young. . . .”

I thought I would burst with curiosity. “For the love of God, will you get on with it, Ma?”

Ma straightened up. “The letter is from a Mr. Aidan O’Hanlon in New York City. It seems he was married, as I told you, to my niece, Mary. . . .”

I was close to screaming. Seeing my face, she hurried up the story. “Well, he says Mary left him with a young girl by the name of Lily. He says before she died, Mary begged him to send for one of her Irish cousins to come over and help take care of the child, and asked him to write to me. He wants the girl to be a governess, he says. What do you think that means?”

“It means a t-teacher.”