“You are maddeningly mistaken. Utrecht was…” Impossible to explain, other than to say that my first attempt at independence had utterly failed. “I felt like the city sat on my chest like an enormous black bird. I couldn’t breathe. At night, I couldn’t sleep. I had dark, shivering premonitions of something terrible happening, and I could almost see…” I swallowed the rest. “I sound more melodramatic than the schoolgirls I taught.”

“Did you see Heathcliff in the mist?” Anna threaded her arm through mine, a gesture of acceptance. She finally believed me that I was holding nothing back. “You shouldn’t read those gothic novels.”

“You sound like the school doctor. Reading adversely affects young women’s mental state and causes melancholia. He was convinced that romantic novels were the root of all evil. He also thought that independent minded, when applied to a woman, was a synonym for addlebrained.”

“What kind of powder did he give you for excessive reading?”

“Something vile that I sprinkled on the geraniums in the window. He also prescribed horseback riding to rattle everything back into proper position in my brain.”

“How smart. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Did it help?”

“No.” I’d remained lost in a sea of sadness. “I could barely rise from bed. I kept waiting for Eduard to visit. He knew I was there, yet he never came.”

The wind made my confession easier, snatching every other word. I felt as if I were confessing to the sea that stretched immense and benevolent to the horizon, offering no judgment.

Anna heard enough to respond with “I’m glad you’re here now. The sea air and Dr. Hollinger’s special diet at the Kurhause will set everything aright.”

If I have to eat another bowl of the resort doctor’s onion, cabbage, and beetroot soup… My heart was sick with longing. As Eduard was the source of my malady, only he could be its cure. I couldn’t wait to read what he’d written. It might even be a proposal. They could come on quite suddenly and without warning, as Theo van Gogh had taught me.

“I wish I could reclaim the months I spent at Utrecht.” So much time wasted. “Dries wrote me about something curious.” A word from my brother’s last letter bobbed in my mind like a seal on the sea. “El anacronópete. A book by the Spanish writer, Enrique Gaspar, about a machine that can fly you back through time.”

Anna was wide-eyed astonished. “For what purpose?”

“To correct the mistakes of the past.”

A wave splashed too close to us, and we jumped away, but soon went back to walking as near the water as we dared.