Everyone had been so devastated by Thomas’s death, Jack felt he should lock up his own sorrow. There was something in him that always deferred to other people in this way, he measured his own grief and found it smaller, something that could be attended to later: he had a cactus soul, he sometimes thought—it needed water, too, but it could wait. When Sadie’s mother died of course he deferred to Sadie; when Fiona died, to his parents, and to Piet; when Thomas died to everyone in the family but then, too, to Sadie. His own grief was larded with helplessness, with the certainty that he was wrong to live so far from his family, that he had abdicated his position accidentally. The wedding had helped with that, but that was past, and he felt now with the force of a premonition worry over Robin, Robin the ordinary, Robin the sturdy. Robin worked for an estate agent in the Cotswolds, and Jack wanted to pull up his Facebook page to make sure he was okay. He got his phone out.

“Not here,” said Sadie. “Let’s just look at the art for now. Do you think we should start at the beginning?”

“No,” said Jack. “Let’s fight the current.”

Stick to your mistake. They rewound Van Gogh’s life. The colors got more ordinary. A certain uninteresting prettiness asserted itself. A child was born, and then another.