“Theo has hardly deserted us, Mama.” I opened the letter and scanned the hastily scribbled lines. “Vincent is unwell again.”

“In what way?” My sister Mien came in behind my mother.

“Theo doesn’t say.” I hurried to my father’s desk in the corner and wrote back immediately. “I’m sending my wishes and prayers for recovery.”

Mama nudged my shoulder. “And ask for details.”

I did. And then two endless days, my heart alternating between the lightest hope and the darkest worry, before Theo’s response arrived.

Anna and I were home alone, my father at work, my mother and older sisters out for a walk with the children. It was Anna’s last day with us, so she was packing. I was in her room to help.

We were planning our next meeting, in Paris, when the maid came upstairs and handed me Theo’s letter.

My eyes flew over the words.

Anna closed her suitcase. “Good news?”

“The news could not be worse.” I staggered to the armchair in the corner and collapsed. I could barely see my friend through my tears. “Vincent is dead.” Breathe. “He shot himself.”

Anna’s legs folded too. The bed caught her. “A tortured soul. But, oh, Jo.” She sprang up and hurried over, put her arms around me. “I am so sorry. Why? Does Theo say what happened?”

I rubbed the tears from my eyes with my wrist to read the newspaper cutout that had come with the letter, from the L’Écho Pontoisien, but new tears replaced the old faster than I could erase them.

Anna took the piece of paper from me and translated as she read. “Sunday, July 27, a certain Van Gogh, aged 37, Dutch national, artist, has shot himself with a revolver in the fields and, only wounded, returned to his room, where he died the day after the next day.”

The article fluttered from her hand, landing on the hem of my skirt.

I couldn’t bear touching it. Not even with every instinct screaming to shake it off, as all women were trained to instantly defend against anything that touched our garments lest it be a stray spark. We no longer wore the crinoline dresses of my mother’s youth that caused thousands of deaths each year, but plenty of women died still from their dresses catching on fire. All I could do was stare at the tightly printed words and shudder with the premonition that they were no less dangerous than live embers, having the power to burn down my whole life.

“But Vincent was so well when we visited him in Auvers in June.” How he’d loved little Wil, had proudly shown his nephew around the animal yard. He even gifted Wil with a bird nest he found. “Theo must be broken.” I struggled to breathe past the pain that hardened my lungs into stone. “I have to write Theo.”