“No. But the more I read his letters…” I clasped my hands on my lap. “I used to just read the parts where he reminisced about Theo in the past. But this week, I read them in full. And I can feel his anguish.”

“He had to have known how much you cared about him. I know it well from how much you care about him still.”

“All I ever wanted was to be a new sister to him. But did he understand that? He felt too keenly the weight of having to be supported by Theo. Did he worry that it was too much? That with Theo having a wife and child, he was a burden? Did he kill himself to free us?” I voiced the question that had kept me up the past two nights.

“Oh, Jo.”

“Theo talked about wanting to quit Goupil to open his own gallery. We saw it as a chance to earn more. But Vincent saw it as exchanging a certain income for an uncertain one. He felt his existence threatened. He says as much in one of his letters.” Was it all my fault? “Theo was willing to take a risk for higher earnings so we could better afford the larger apartment. Which I wanted. Had I not married Theo, Vincent might not have taken his own life. And had Vincent not died, Theo would not have been so despondent that he succumbed to his illness. They would be both alive and happy without me.”

“Don’t think like that, Jo. Guilt is a slow poison.”

I could not let go of the guilt, but I set it aside and whispered my darkest fear yet. “What if Wil inherited Vincent’s and Theo’s illness of the mind?”

“He did not,” Anna said in the firmest tone possible. “He is a kind child, sweet and smart. And he has the most exceptional woman for his mother in all the Netherlands.”

“I miss Theo.” I sniffed.

“Visiting his grave didn’t help? It helps when I visit my sister.”

Wil and I had taken the train to Utrecht and laid red roses on his father’s grave. Theo had given me red roses on our wedding day. Grief lay thick as fog all around us, exhaustion heavy on my shoulders. I’d been tired of the big house in Bussum and the work, and the loneliness of the years yet to come. I’d wanted to lie down on the cold dirt. I’d wanted to lie down and stay.

In the end, my little son had led me away.

Anna placed a gentle hand on my arm. “Don’t escape too long into those letters, Jo. You wouldn’t want to lose yourself completely in the past.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Despite the end?

“The future has so much to offer.”

Easy for her to say, her husband still alive, the two of them awaiting the birth of another child.