They never should have traveled there by train that day when they’d had their photograph taken. Ans had loved the city. Lena had hated it. It was too noisy and busy, with cars and bicycles and trains racing past. Lena had felt lost and disoriented among the twisting streets and winding rivers and canals. The houses crowded together like kernels of corn on a cob with no open spaces between them. Ans had declared the city beautiful. She had been restless to return ever since.

“You can’t keep me here. I’m almost nineteen!”

Lena turned away to avoid saying something she would regret. And so that Ans wouldn’t see her tears. She walked through the door to the barn, then outside to where Pieter was repairing a bicycle tire. “I could hear you fighting with Ans again,” he said.

“She insults me and our way of life, Pieter. I don’t know how to get through to her.”

Pieter removed his cap and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “You can’t, Lena. She’s been strong-willed and determined to get her own way since the day she was born, remember?”

Oh yes. Lena remembered. Ans had never been a quiet, contented child like Wim or Maaike. “She’s so stubborn!” Lena said. “Why won’t she listen to reason?”

“Her stubbornness might be her greatest asset one day.”

“Or it might bring her to ruin.”

Pieter pulled his cap over his sweaty hair again. “Ans spent the past year watching her grandmother slowly die. Let her go, Lena. Trying to hold on to her is like holding on to sand. The tighter you grip, the faster it slips through your fingers.”

Impossible. Lena was the glue that held the farm and the family together. Everything would fall apart if she let go. She moved forward into Pieter’s arms, loving his strength and solidity, a tree with deep roots and strong limbs. Lena had married him when she was eighteen —Ans’s age —and had never regretted it for a single moment. “What about her soul, Pieter? She’s rejecting the church and everything we’ve taught her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said with a sigh. “Talk to your father. See what he has to say.”

She kissed him and left him to his work, walking slowly back toward the house. She had work to do as well, but she was too worried to concentrate on any of it. She looked for Maaike and Wim and found them crouched in the tall grass by the edge of the canal, their blond heads bent together as they examined a frog or a bug or some such treasure. “I’m going into the village,” she called to them. “Want to come?”