I picked up the folded letter at the top of the pile. “He was not a bad man. If only people knew him…” I sounded pitiful, begging Anna to understand. I let the letter fall from my fingers. “A few weeks ago, on the first anniversary of his death, I could find no rest after I went to bed.” I’d fallen into a nocturnal gloom. The air had held a mournful restlessness that chased the sleep from my eyes and chased me from my room. “While Wil was asleep, I went for a walk in the drizzle.”

“You could have caught a cold.”

“Vincent walked a lot, did I tell you? An unhealthy amount, Theo sometimes said. He would walk for days, to towns where he wanted to see a friend, through storms or freezing cold, eating only a slice of bread here and there, spending his nights out in the open.”

“He was healthier in the body than he was in the mind.”

Anna might have been right about that. “As I ambled through the evening by myself, I noticed the lit windows around me. I could see the happy families inside. I understood at last how lonely Vincent must have felt. Theo knew, of course. But until then, I didn’t.”

“Oh, Jo. You couldn’t have.”

“It broke my heart. Vincent had always stood on the outside, lost to all. I don’t want him to remain lost. If people could read his letters, they would love him as much as Theo and I did. Even strangers would be able to comprehend the thoughts and emotions that went into his works. How his sunflowers are gratitude and his wheat fields are loneliness. If only I were clever enough to explain.”

“You’re the cleverest woman I know. Clever enough to know that it does no good to keep living in old memories.”

“But his words are so full of tenderness and brilliance and rage and despair. And, Anna, so much faith.” I slipped my treasure box on top of the cupboard where it obscured the bottom of Vincent’s The Harbor hanging on the wall, but was at least safe from sticky little hands. “Vincent reminisced a lot in his letters about the times he and Theo spent together.”

Anna was taking a turn around the kitchen, a hand at her lower back, but she stopped to cast me a curious glance.

My fingers moved in a helpless flutter. “I don’t know how to explain.”

“Vincent’s letters make you feel as if Theo is still with you.” Her voice softened.

“Yes.”

“I know you hated to leave Paris, but maybe it’s good that you did. Everything there would have kept reminding you of him.”

“I want everything to remind me of him.” And everything did, even here.