Even if I’d not known their history and how much they’d had to overcome together, I’d have guessed that they were family from the way they interacted. Family, so I’d come to learn in life, was not merely the people you were bound to by your blood, but those you bound yourself to by your choosing. It was very clear that Maggie Graeme had chosen Lily.

“Come and sit,” said Maggie now. “We have all that we need.”

As Lily took the chair beside her, Maggie looked across at Gilroy, who was seated next to me. We’d brought the table once again before the hearth, to make it easy to take notes. Gilroy, when confronted with the fact there were but three chairs in the room, and one of those half-broken, had excused himself for a few moments, gone downstairs, and then returned with two plain wooden chairs he’d borrowed from the shopkeeper below.

With Gilroy, I was never sure if he obtained things because people were disarmed by him or threatened, but whatever his approach it was successful. So the women had the better chairs, and he and I the plainer ones, and with wine to drink, our papers set upon the table, and our pens inked, we began.

Maggie surprised us all, at the beginning, when I asked her if she’d ever seen Lily together with James Graeme.

“Only once,” she said. “The day after Saint Andrew’s day. The day that…” She glanced up at me, as though unsure how much I knew. “The day my brother went away.”

I hadn’t been expecting this. I looked across at Lily, who seemed stunned, and said to Maggie, “You have never told me this.”

“It never seemed like something I should mention,” Maggie said. “And I did fear I’d get in trouble, for I was not meant to be out on the pier. I used to do that sometimes—slip out on my own, when everybody else was busy with their work. I liked to see the ships. I didn’t stay out long, so I was never missed. And that day, you’ll remember, there was so much going on, and I just wanted one more look at it before I did begin my lessons. But when I came near the windmill, you were there already with a man, and you were talking. You did call him Jamie, and I did not hear what else you told him, but I did hear him reply, ‘A Graeme would not leave you.’ And then you began to weep. He tried to comfort you. So I turned back. And that’s when I saw Matthew.”

Gilroy said, “Your brother Matthew?”

“Yes. He’d come down from his lodging, and was standing on the pier as well. I don’t believe he noticed me, I was well back between the houses. He was watching Lily and James Graeme. And then he turned back, too. Like I did. And he went away.”

I made a note upon the paper, feeling Lily’s eyes upon me, wondering if we were thinking the same thing, or if her thoughts were turning backward to that day upon the pier and what might have gone differently had Matthew not ignored her knocking at his door that morning, while my own thoughts were more fixed upon the fact that Maggie having seen James Graeme there with Lily might now be a problem.