Across the compartment, a young couple sat, smiling at each other and holding hands. They engaged in a whispered conversation, punctuated by frequent laughter.

I closed my eyes. I bitterly envied their happiness.

What I hear from Paris is all good, dearest. All the big names are talking about Vincent, more than ever. His talent is widely acknowledged. He is missed. He will not be forgotten.

I gripped my bag tightly on my lap.

Little Wil is healthy. And so am I. And soon you’ll recover, and then we shall go home. Wil asks about you. He looks around. Papa?

And then I imagined what I would say to Theo’s doctor, what questions I’d ask. And I imagined how the doctor would answer.

The prognosis, Mevrouw Van Gogh, is entirely favorable.

I refused to entertain anything else.

The news will be good, the news will be good, the news will be good, I repeated to myself.

I deboarded the train with that very mindset. As I hurried down the platform, protecting my fragile dried bouquet, I was filled with nothing but optimism. And I swore that after this was over, I’d never again return to Utrecht.

I resented the city’s gray sky, the insidious cold winds that blew down the medieval streets and narrow canals, the dark Dom Tower that loomed over all like a menacing angel. I had disliked Utrecht when I taught English at their school for girls three years before, and now I disliked it even more for stealing my Theo.

On my way to the clinic, I practiced smiling. Theo must not see me worried. At first, I feared passersby might think I was demented, but nobody paid attention to me. I must have looked like a crone: wearing all black in mourning for Vincent, shoulders hunched, eyes red.

And then, all too soon and not soon enough, I was there.

“Meneer Van Gogh is having a difficult day,” Theo’s doctor told me, offering a metal chair in his spartan office. White tile covered the spotless floor, everything as clean scrubbed as if he expected to perform surgery.

His white coat covered him to the knees. No bright colors were allowed in the room, all life drained away. The sea of nothingness swallowed me whole, whitecaps of worry washing over my head. “How bad?”

“A visit would not be the wisest course of action today.” The doctor watched me with beady brown eyes that rarely blinked, as if he was fixated on seeing inside me.

He couldn’t mean to keep me from my husband, could he? “I haven’t seen him in a week.”

“Even so.” The man folded his hands over his portly belly.

“But I found him improved on my last visit.”

“He has suffered a setback since.”