“A country’s worth” of Newfoundlanders lived abroad, my father said. During the war, thousands of Newfoundland women married and went back to the States with American servicemen. All but one of my mother’s five aunts scattered to the Boston States. My grandfather received news of his sister May’s death after not having seen or heard from her for fifty years, though there had been no falling-out between them. He was sixty years old at the time. It was summer. My mother and I went to see him after my grandmother called, but I was six, so my mother told me nothing. My grandmother was in the kitchen when we got there. I wandered off down the hallway. The door of my grandparents’ bedroom was open, and my grandfather was sitting on his bed, hands resting on the edge of the mattress, shoulders slumped. I was shocked to see him indoors on a weekday afternoon. Sunshine poured into the room, illuminating dust motes and a patch of ancient rug. “Hello, Wayne,” he said. “How come you’re in here?”
