When we arrive on the patio Candace looks up in surprise at my approach; the smile she had been wearing for Kat diminishes a bit.
“She wanted me to come,” I say softly.
“How do you know she did?” Candace asks, brow furrowed.
“Because she said it.”
This seems to silence Candace for a moment. The visit commences then with Candace asking Kat about how we spent our morning. Perhaps this is one reason why Kat wanted me here, toanswer what is probably a daily question. I tell Candace about the walk Kat and I took after breakfast and the lizard that crossed our path and the nice invitation from the innkeeper’s wife when we returned to let Kat help her make empanadas, which are tiny little turnovers filled with meat, onions, and spices. After we share about our morning, Kat heads to the shadiest part of the patio to draw pictures on her tablet.
“Do you want me to go back into the waiting area?” I ask Candace.
“No.”
We watch Kat for a few minutes.
“So. Your father’s word book,” Candace says. “Do you have it with you?”
“It’s back at the inn.”
“Would you bring it with you next time? Would you let me see it?”
“Of course.” I can’t help but smile. I’m hoping this means my days of waiting alone in the visitors’ lounge are over.
The next day I do in fact bring Da’s word book. I enjoy watching Candace look at my father’s neat script and read aloud the words he found interesting and didn’t want to forget. We laugh over some of them, likeflatulence, which my father had described as meaningthose nasty pops of stink out the arse, anduppity, which he defined asbigheaded folks apt to scrape their noses on the ceiling. When Candace comes across the wordredamancy, which Da had defined asloving someone deeply and having that love returned in full, she looks up at me from the page.
“That first day, when you told me who you were, you said that you didn’t care that you’d married a man you didn’t love because you’d given your heart before and it had been crushed.”
I look down at my father’s handwriting, the comforting swirls and flourishes of the ink. “Yes.”
“What happened?”
Kat is a few feet away working a puzzle that I bought at a five-and-ten in town—one hundred intricate pieces—and she is thoughtfully engaged in her task.
I decide in that moment that I will tell Candace a portion of what I never tell anyone. I want her to know that I understand what it’s like to be betrayed by someone you thought you could trust. I want her to know that I know some of the hard road she’s had to travel.
“There was a young man in my village,” I begin. “A fisherman like his father and grandfather and brother. He was more a friend of Mason’s than mine, but I fancied him. He was tall and strong and all the girls in the village had their eye on him. Da hadn’t thought much of Colm. He wanted me to marry someone genteel and educated, a learned man. Colm wasn’t like that. But Da was already gone when Colm started showing interest in me, coming round the cottage to visit, bringing Mam and me choice catches of fish, telling me I was pretty. Mam and I were struggling to get by, and when Colm asked me to marry him a few months before my eighteenth birthday, I said yes. Mam didn’t try to talk me out of it even though she knew if Da were alive he’d say no. She thought at least I would have plenty to eat, married to a fisherman, and she wouldn’t have to worry about how cold the house got at night, because she would be the only one in it. And I thought by marrying Colm I could make sure she had plenty to eat, too. I said yes partly for her, and she did the same thing.”
“But you loved him?”
“I thought I did. I think it was more that I loved that he chose me, that of all the girls in the village he chose me.”
“And you were happy at first, weren’t you?” Candace says, and it’s not a question. She knows there was bliss in the beginning, because the same was true for her.
“I was. At first.”
I stop for a moment as I parcel out in my head what I will share with her and what I won’t, what I will allow myself to relive in front of her and what I won’t.
“When did you stop being happy?” she asks, when I don’t continue.
“When I realized he could be as violent as he was loving,” I answer. “Colm was a man of strong feelings, which means he could be extremely happy one moment and extremely unhappy the next. He did not take well to disappointment, and life is unfortunately full of disappointments.”
“Did he hurt you? Did he strike you?” Candace’s eyes are full of concern but also curiosity.
“He would throw things about when he was angry. Sometimes at me. Sometimes what he threw about were his fists.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
I shrug, as much to shake off the hard weight of these memories as to ask,What good would that have done?“Even if I told someone, how could that person have helped me? Colm was my husband.”
