“Do you remember what I told you about your great-uncle?”

“He sailed on a ship.”

“He was an admiral in the navy.”

“What else?” He loved this game.

The enthusiasm on his sweet face made me smile. “One of your great-grandfathers was bookbinder to the king.”

“Did he go to the palace?” He grinned wide, his mouth stuffed with biscuit, dropping crumbs all over his lap.

“What did I say about talking with your mouth full?”

He pressed his lips shut and chewed with great effort.

“Well done.” I reached across to tousle his hair. “Yes. He went to the palace all the time.”

Not that I knew that for a fact. Willem Carbentus was my mother-in-law’s father, and I had never met him. All I knew about him was that he had framed our country’s first constitution, which Theo’s mother had recounted to me proudly, and I had told Wil many times. I was determined not to let my son feel the shadows of his ancestry ever, but to paint in his mind a line of great men to inspire him.

“You have his name,” I told him. “Willem.”

“But I was named after my uncle. Vincent Willem van Gogh.”

“You certainly were.”

He puffed out his chest. “Will I meet the king?”

“We have a queen now, love. Young Queen Wilhelmina, with her mother Queen Emma as regent, remember? Only great men receive the honor of meeting the queen. If you want to meet her, you must become a great man.”

“When I go to the palace, I will take you too, Mama,” he told me with confidence.

“Thank you, Wil.” He had inherited his father’s generous heart. Nothing else, please, I silently begged God. With that good heart, please let the similarities end.

Anna entered the compartment just as the train lurched into motion, steadying herself on top of her seat. She and her husband, Jan, had run into a friend as we had boarded the train. They’d stopped to talk in the corridor outside while we had waited for our departure. My friends were coming along to support me at Vincent’s exhibit at Arti.

“What a good boy,” Anna told Wil as she sat in the seat next to him. She’d left her daughters home with her mother.

Wil was too lost in his doodling to respond.

Anna smiled at me. “Nervous?”

“I might faint.”

“There will be many fine gentlemen there to catch you, I am certain.”

“I’m not going husband hunting.” I gave a desperate laugh. “I have spent all these months in Bussum and but grieved and tried to replace Theo with other men.”

I stopped when I realized how that sounded. “In the sense that I spent all that time trying to find someone else to champion Vincent. And now I’ve decided to carry on Vincent’s legacy myself.”

Anna nodded.