“Papa? Bent u wakker?” I whispered at his door, asking if he was awake. He tended to respond better to Dutch when partially asleep. Receiving no answer, I entered to find him sprawled over his covers, still dressed for the day with even his chook, what the locals called a knit cap. His presence was a veritable comfort.

Past my bare metal bed frame, atop our shared night table sat the candle. It had been reduced to a puddle of wax, but its flame’s orange glow smoothed Papa’s face, erasing years and hardships in a way that made me both happy and sad.

Of course, the scent of his pipe smoke lingered. As did liquor fumes out of his pores from another late-night visit to the café. There, strikers’ talks had reportedly shifted to demands for an investigation into the stampede. Called a “tragedy” by some, a “massacre” by others.

Given Papa’s manner since the funerals—his quiet turning morose, his drinking turned heavier and daily—I’d say he viewed the event as both. Perhaps nearly losing me had shaken his core. That or the onslaught of deaths had revived despair over the wife he’d lost.

Either way, I knew not to ask. Probes about my mother rarely produced answers, most cut short by a dimming in his eyes and the excuse of a pressing chore.

I remember at age six mulling how to broach the subject of his choosing another wife. At the time, we still lived in Little Chute, a Dutch-Catholic community in eastern Wisconsin; it was where my newlywed parents had settled after my mother swayed her groom into the overseas adventure, lured by rumors of a prosperous new world—and one particular river. Since the village sits along the Fox River, it promised a fairy-tale ending, before life there took a turn.

In truth, when I’d finally plied Papa with the question, I was hankering for him to propose to a certain woman in our boardinghouse. For years after my mother’s passing, Miss Roosa assisted with my care and cooked our meals, eventually allowing me to help. She was kind and commonly pretty, if a smidge bothersome with lessons in posture and speech, both in Dutch and English, and often smelled of the vanilla she added to her boterkoek. Like her bubbly giggles, the sweet, buttery cake even pried smiles out of Papa. I was sure I’d soon be calling her “Moeder” and we’d become a real family, maybe with a set of siblings—fun ones, not the annoying sort.

But Papa had replied with a stern shake of his head: For man and woman, there is only one love in life.