Het Meisje van Zaterdag

The Hotel did not ease them into Antwerp; it dropped them, abrupt as birth, onto a silent residential street, the suddenness so clean once the elevator door opened, it made the air taste different. Andy’s first breath of it was sharp, mineral, the sort of cold that made you immediately notice you had lungs and sinuses. The sky above was not gray, exactly, but a solid, cloudless white—a color the Midwest tried for in winter and never quite got right. Here it was perfect, stretching blank and boundaryless above the teeth of narrow brick row houses.

He blinked twice, the light smearing afterimages on his retinas, and then looked at Liesa.

She stood very still beside him, a full step out ahead, hands loose and open at her sides. For a moment she did not move at all. Andy could see her eyes tracking the street: every balcony, every front stoop with its lichen-eaten planter, every tiny sidewalk bicycle chained in series like dominoes about to topple. She was wearing a mustard-yellow wool coat, slightly oversized, with a wide collar folded down over a cream-colored blouse, and dark trousers tucked into short boots the color of wet clay. A colored scarf was wrapped around her neck, and a knit cap, rust-orange, sat high on her head in the way that suggested she’d put it on without a mirror and it had landed right anyway.

The whole effect was cheerful in a practical, unselfconscious way, like a color palette chosen by someone who simply liked colors. The way her shoulders sat, perfectly even and relaxed, was not the posture of a tourist or someone hoping to impress. It was the posture of an animal in its home territory, so unselfconscious it bordered on sacred.

He recognized the look on her face—it wasn’t nostalgia, or pride, or anything so quotable. It was a kind of pure belonging. He realized, with some discomfort, that he’d never seen it on her before.

Liesa turned to him, her lips parted for a second as if to ask a question, then changed her mind and said, “Is Borgerhout. Antwerp.” Her accent in that instant went soft, vowels thickened at the edges by memory. “I grew up here. Before America, before Chicago, before all of it.” She gestured loosely at the street, not at any one thing but at the whole of it—the scale of it, the smell. “I wanted you to see it. The real one. Not the diamond district, not the cathedral. Everyone goes there.” She paused, something shifting behind her eyes. “I wanted you to see where I am actually from.”

She pointed with her chin to a narrow row house two doors down: three stories, the brickwork a cleaner orange than its neighbors, the door so dark a green it was almost black. Window boxes lined the bottom two panes, the petunias and pansies in them just barely holding on in the early spring air. She said nothing else for a moment, just looked at it the way you look at something you’ve been carrying for a long time and have finally set down.

“That was my house, before,” she said, voice matter-of-fact. “We moved when I was twelve. But this was—” She paused, rolling her hand at the wrist, not for drama but to buy a few more seconds of looking at it. “—the good part. My mother used to clean the front steps with boiling water, even in winter, so that the other women would see we had pride.” She said this with a smile, the kind that remembered pain and chose not to dwell on it.

She didn’t linger, but she didn’t speed past it either. They stood there for a minute, just far enough away to be on someone else’s property, and Andy let her have the silence. He looked up at the windows—one curtain half-drawn, a toy giraffe slumped on the sill—and then at the row of parked bicycles whose front tires all pointed the same way. He wondered how many lives you could reconstruct from the way they chained the bikes here. A lot, probably.

Liesa set off at a measured pace, every step a study in balance and inattention, her hips shifting with the effortless grace that even the transformations could not make ridiculous. She gestured at the next corner. “Is the tram stop. I used to wait there with my cousin. He always made me stand upwind so I wouldn’t smell the smokers.” She wrinkled her nose, mock-disgusted.

Andy said, “Did you hate it?”

She shrugged. “No. I hated missing the tram more. Being late in Belgium is like being a criminal.” She glanced at him sidelong, smile sharpened by a private joke. “Not like Americans. Here, you’re expected.”

He tried to laugh, but the air made it come out thinner than he intended.

Past the tram stop, the street sloped gently, running toward a stand of skinny plane trees whose limbs looked like they’d been drawn on the sky with a black crayon. At the far end, a cluster of little kids in fluorescent vests were circling a pile of melting snow, the high clear sound of their Dutch competing with the whistle of a distant train. Liesa ignored the kids, but Andy noticed the way her eyes softened on the sight.

They reached a cross-street, wider than the last, and Liesa paused to scan for traffic even though there was none. Across the street was a small park, the kind that didn’t seem to have an official entrance but was nonetheless outlined with a low, perfectly straight iron fence. Inside, the grass was shockingly green, almost artificial, and someone had raked all the leaves into a tidy perimeter along the edge.

Liesa stepped to the fence and put her hand on one of the uprights, letting her fingers rest there. “I came here every Saturday,” she said. “To draw. My mother would send me with a book and half a sandwich, so I wouldn’t come back too soon.” She squinted at the bench under the trees, eyes narrowing in concentration. “Is the same one. You want to sit?”

He nodded, and together they walked through the open gate, gravel crunching underfoot. Liesa sat first, letting her body settle in a way that made the bench look not only designed for her but a little improved by her presence.

Andy sat beside her, aware of his own posture for the first time all day.

Liesa glanced at him. “You are too tight,” she said, not accusing but observational. “You should lean back.”

He did, the cold wood against his shoulder blades waking him up. “Sorry. I never know how to act in Europe.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are fine. Only the French care.” Then, after a beat: “You speak Flemish still, or only the words I taught you?”

Andy answered in Flemish, the best he could manage: “Ik spreek het nog. Maar ik klink als een Amerikaan, ja?” I can still speak it. But I sound like an American, don’t I?

Liesa’s face brightened with a wild, genuine amusement, and she let out a laugh loud enough to startle the nearest pigeons. “You sound like a soap opera,” she said, in English. “But I like it. You have more emotion than most Belgians.”

He laughed, surprised at how much he liked the sound of it. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It is,” she said. “But you don’t have to try so hard here. Nobody judges the way you talk. Only the way you walk.”

Andy looked down at his own feet, then at hers. He noticed, for the first time, that she was walking slightly pigeon-toed, a habit she’d never had in Chicago.

She saw him looking and wiggled her ankle boots, the movement so silly and unguarded it startled him all over again. “It’s the old shoes,” she said. “They make me feel sixteen.”

They sat for a while in companionable silence, letting the sounds of the city bleed in: a siren, the flap of laundry on the line above, the soft ding of the distant tram. The world here felt layered, every inch of space holding three or four stories at once.

Liesa pointed at the wall bordering the far side of the park. “You see that?”

He followed her finger. There was a strip of wall, maybe two meters long, painted a dull gray that didn’t match the brick on either side. Nothing remarkable.

“There was a mural,” she said. “A woman’s face, big and beautiful, like the Virgin Mary but with more anger. My father hated it.” She smiled, a little sad. “Someone painted it over. Maybe the city, maybe just a new owner.”

Andy said, “You remember it exactly?”

She nodded. “I can see it in my head now. It’s better than most things I ever painted myself.” She stopped, thinking. “It was gone when I came back from America, late last year. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”

She glanced at him, as if realizing she’d said too much, then leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You know what’s strange? Being here, I don’t miss anything.” She paused, testing the words. “I think I just like that it still exists.”

He said, “You belong here.”

She gave him a look, direct but not challenging. “Maybe. But I belong with you and Sam, more. You, however, look good in this light.”

Andy almost missed the switch, so natural was the transition from memory to present. He shrugged, unsure how to return the compliment.

Liesa stood, stretching in a way that made her body long and loose, and said, “You want to see the bakery? It’s the best in Antwerp.” She took a step, then looked back at him. “If you are hungry.”

He was, suddenly, ravenous.

They left the park, her stride unhurried but with a slight swagger now, like the Liesa he’d met at UIC, only stripped of artifice. They walked the two blocks to the bakery, and all the while Andy watched her, watched the way she moved in this place, as if her soul had simply grown to fit the streets, the benches, the little iron fence.

He realized, as they reached the bakery's stoop, that he was seeing her for the first time without any of the layers she usually carried with her. Not the performer, not the puzzle, not the version of herself she'd assembled for other people's benefit. Just Liesa, in the city that made her, at ease in a way he hadn't known she was capable of. He had never seen her so at peace, even at UIC.

She turned to look at him at the threshold, her face open and easy, and smiled. “You coming, schat?”

He followed her inside.

Inside, the warmth was so complete it stunned him. The bakery was barely two rooms deep, but it held enough heat and scent to erase the memory of any other breakfast he’d ever had. Butter and cardamom and the raw gold of just-baked bread—those were the high notes, but underneath was something ancient, an aroma that must have been woven into the brickwork by a hundred years of yeast and sugar. Andy’s mouth watered before he even saw the display.

The woman behind the counter had the look of someone who had never, not once, worn an expression she didn’t mean. Her hair was pulled back into a knot, flour dusted across both sleeves, and her hands had the square, capable shape of a person who could roll dough in her sleep. She saw Liesa and broke into a smile that Andy would have called reserved, except it clearly meant everything.

“Liesje!” the woman exclaimed, the diminutive curling the name into something affectionate and almost proprietary. “Het is eeuwen geleden! Kom, kom.” It’s been centuries! Come, come. The words spilled over, quick and unforced, and Andy could see that the entire exchange had happened between the first eye contact and the last two steps to the counter.

They hugged, one-armed, a kind of sturdy, untheatrical embrace. Then the woman fixed her gaze on Andy. She gave him the two-second scan—shoes, shoulders, face, then back to face. She said something to Liesa in a lower voice, questioning, and Liesa replied, “Amerikaans,” and added, “Hij verstaat een beetje.” He understands a little.

The woman nodded, accepting this, and then focused entirely on Liesa again. Andy stood there, oddly at ease with being the silent half of the equation. He looked at the pastries behind the glass: some he recognized, most he didn’t. There was a tray of tiny brown waffles, studded with caramelized syrup that had dripped and blackened into the edges; there were little almond domes, each scored with a delicate crosshatch; a loaf that looked like it weighed as much as his forearm, dusted with poppy seeds and something that might have been salt or sugar or both.

Liesa ordered with a brisk certainty, not bothering to check with him—he liked that about her, that she assumed anyone she brought here would want what she wanted. She glanced at him, a quick sideways check, and he nodded to show he was game.

They took their bounty to a small table by the window. The chair backs were painted duck-egg blue, the wood worn to a comfortable roundness. Liesa set the tray between them and began distributing items: a slab of waffle for each, a little almond dome for her, a rough-crumbed slice of the poppy loaf for him, and two tiny cups of black coffee, poured from a battered steel pitcher.

The coffee was so strong that, for a second, Andy could be sure he could feel his heart racing. He didn’t mind. The waffle, which he’d expected to be light and sweet, instead had a dense, almost savory heft—the syrup baked into it was dark and bitter and perfect, and the crust shattered under his teeth like glass.

He looked at Liesa, who was watching him eat with an expression of amused expectation, as if she’d just bet someone that he’d finish the whole thing in one go.

“This is insane,” he said, meaning it as high praise. “Why don’t they make these in America?”

Liesa smiled, the right side of her mouth curling up higher than the left. “Because in America, everyone wants to be healthy.” She pronounced it with a little sneer, half-joking, half-true. “Here, we just want to be happy at breakfast.”

He took another bite, and it was even better than the first.

She sipped her coffee, then tilted her head at him. “You like it?”

Andy tried for Flemish: “Het is… het lekkerste gebakje in jaren.” It is… the best pastry in years. He knew his pronunciation was off, but he wanted her to hear it anyway.

Her face went luminous with pleasure. She said, “Try again, but the ‘r’ is softer. Jaa-ren.” She showed him, slow, then waited for him to mimic.

He did, and she laughed. “Beter. Almost perfect.” She said it with the same gentle pride as a music teacher hearing a student get the note right.

The woman from the counter came by to check on them, arms folded under her apron. She and Liesa exchanged a few rapid lines—Andy caught only fragments, but enough to know the woman was asking after Liesa’s family, her “oude vader,” her job in the city. Liesa answered smoothly, not a stutter in sight, and her tone made clear that whatever had changed, she was doing well now.

As they ate, Liesa fell into the habit of narration, not in a performative way but like she was letting Andy listen in on her inner monologue. “Every Saturday,” she said, “my mother would walk me here. She’d order two of these”—she pointed at the waffle—“and one almondkoekje for herself. She’d never let me eat the whole thing at once. Half for now, half for later.” She laughed. “She said it made the day longer.”

Andy said, “I’d eat the whole thing,” and Liesa shot him a look that managed to be both teasing and a little sad.

“Of course you would,” she said, soft. “But that’s good. I like it when you are greedy for something.”

He wanted to say something clever, but the food was so good and her happiness so real that all he could do was smile, and watch her enjoy watching him.

“Did you come here after your mom—” He stopped, not wanting to push the memory, but Liesa didn’t flinch.

She answered, “Not at first. It felt wrong, like cheating.” She turned the almond pastry in her hand, considering. “But one time, I stopped by. The first time, I cried so much that the vrouw behind the counter gave me a discount.” She smiled at the memory. “Now is just a place. But is a good place. Some things stay good, even after.”

Andy nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

They watched the street outside. The morning rush had passed, and now only the occasional cyclist or pensioner with a rolling cart passed by. The light in the bakery made everything look golden, as if they were inside a painting.

Andy broke the silence. “So the woman at the counter—she knew you as a kid?”

Liesa grinned. “She saw me when I was born. Her own children are older, but she knew my mother from the church. She saw me grow up, leave, come back. I think she expected me to have children by now.” Liesa shrugged, unbothered.

Andy said, “She likes you.”

Liesa snorted. “She likes the memory of me. But she likes you, too. She thinks you are kind.” She looked at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “And that you have a good head for business.”

He laughed, almost **** on the bitterness of the brew. “She got all that from one look?”

Liesa nodded, serious. “It’s a skill. Most Belgians have it, but she is an artist.”

He glanced at the counter woman, who was now discussing something with a delivery driver, her hands moving in efficient arcs. He wondered how many stories she’d watched play out in this room. Probably enough to write a hundred books.

He turned back to Liesa, suddenly aware of how the light caught in her hair, the shadows on her cheekbones. She looked more herself here than he’d ever seen her—unfiltered, not even bothering to remember the persona she wore in the States.

He said, “You seem different here.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “Different-better or different-strange?”

Andy considered. “Better,” he said, without hesitation. “Like you’re not hiding anymore.”

She looked at him, and in that instant he saw the girl from college, the one who once lay next to him on a freezing apartment floor and talked about every country she wanted to see before she died.

She said, “I wanted you to see this place, but I wanted to see it again, too. I have run for too long. Is good, to be back home.”

He nodded. “I am proud of you, Liesa.”

Liesa smiled, the expression turning all her sharpness to liquid. “Thank you.”

They finished their pastries in silence, watching the world through the window while the bakery’s warmth pressed in from all sides. When they stood to leave, the woman at the counter waved, told them to come back any time.

On the street again, Andy felt changed, somehow. Liesa looped her arm through his, no fanfare, and said, “Ready?”

He nodded, and together they set off toward the river.

The city proper was a short walk—ten minutes if you hurried, but neither of them did. Liesa led them along a side street that emptied out onto a broad avenue, then under an archway and down a cobblestone stair. The houses on either side grew older, their brickwork going from orange to red to a deep, almost purple brown. At every block, the angle of the light changed, and with it the color of the air, shifting from crisp and blue to honeyed and diffuse as they neared the river.

At the bottom of the stairs, the Scheldt unrolled before them, gray and flat as polished steel. Here, the banks were walled with quarried stone, the paths wide enough for two bicycles and a stroller. The river was the sort that always looked cold, even in summer, and the winter day’s pale sky only made it sharper, more exact.

Liesa slowed, turning to face the water, and for a few seconds she said nothing at all. Then she nodded at the surface. “See that?” she said, gesturing with her chin. “The way the sun only hits certain patches, and the rest looks like it’s not even moving? I tried to paint that once. More than once, really.”

Andy followed her line of sight. “Why stop?”

She shrugged. “I never got it right. The first time, I made the water too blue. The second, too shiny. The third time…” She paused, then smiled. “I think I just wanted to see if it was possible. It wasn’t. So I stopped painting it and started coming to look instead.” She let out a little breath, watching it fog the air. “Sometimes it’s better just to look.”

He said, “But you remember how it felt.”

She looked at him, eyebrow arched, but her eyes softened. “I do,” she said. “I remember exactly.”

They followed the curve of the river, dodging a handful of joggers and an older man fishing from the embankment. Now and then Liesa pointed out a building—there was the new wing of the University, all glass and steel, and there the church with its stubby, mismatched towers. Once she stopped so abruptly that Andy nearly ran into her.

“That building,” she said, pointing at a pale stone block with faded gold lettering above the door, “was a candy shop. The kind with giant jars in the window. My cousin stole a whole bag of cuberdons once. I thought he’d get arrested.” She grinned, the memory lighting her face. “He shared with me, though. First time I ever lied to my mother.”

“Worth it?” Andy asked.

Liesa’s grin widened. “Absolutely.” She took a deliberate, playful step closer to him, brushing her shoulder against his as if to share the secret all over again.

A few blocks further on, the buildings pressed closer together and the air picked up the tang of old stone, coffee, and the faintest undernote of diesel. They cut down a narrow street and arrived at a museum, the entrance almost hidden by scaffolding and the seasonal construction that seemed to be everywhere in Europe this time of year. Liesa paid their admission without comment and led Andy up a set of echoing stairs.

Inside, the galleries were nearly empty—only a handful of retirees and a pair of students sketching in a corner. Liesa ignored the main exhibit, the one advertised with bright posters in the entry, and instead guided Andy to a smaller wing set off from the rest. The rooms here were dimmer, the walls painted a pale blue, and the only light came from high windows that filtered the gray day into long, diagonal strips.

The art was almost all interiors—quiet rooms, kitchen tables, half-dressed beds, the geometry of shadow and sunlight across floorboards. Andy looked at the first canvas and saw nothing dramatic, only the deliberate arrangement of everyday things: a jar, a loaf of bread, a folded letter left open beside a cup. He glanced at Liesa, who had gone still before a small painting of a woman reading at a window, the light catching on her cheekbone.

She didn’t speak for a while. Andy waited, content to let her have the silence.

Finally, Liesa said, “I found this place when I was sixteen. My friend told me about a room where nobody ever goes. I used to come in the afternoon, sit here for an hour, and just…” She made a helpless gesture, as if the word had slipped away. “I used to look at the way the light came in. Not the people, not the objects. Just the light.”

Andy moved to stand beside her, close enough that their shoulders brushed. He looked at the painting: the woman’s face was gentle, her hair falling loose around her, and the light coming through the window was a soft, lemon yellow, bright but not harsh. The interior was nothing special—plain table, simple chair, walls bare except for one crooked picture.

He stared at the canvas, trying to see it as Liesa saw it. At first, all he could notice was the realism, the accuracy of the brushwork. But after a few seconds, the details seemed to fall away, and all that was left was the quality of the light: how it made the room look warmer than the world outside, how it made the woman’s book seem like a small, private treasure.

He said, quietly, “It looks like a good place to be.”

Liesa nodded, and for a second, Andy thought he saw her eyes go wet. She didn’t look at him, just studied the painting until her face settled again.

They wandered the other rooms, not hurrying, not trying to see everything. Sometimes Liesa would stop, gesture at a particular patch of wall or the way a shadow cut across a floor, and Andy would look and try to see it too. He liked how she saw the world: not as a series of big, dramatic events, but as a collection of small, perfect moments.

When they left, Liesa steered him to a bench just above the waterline, old wood polished by decades of use. She sat first, then patted the space beside her. Andy joined her, and for a while, they just watched the water and let the quiet fill up around them.

He felt her shoulder brush his again, this time not an accident but a deliberate, gentle press. She didn’t lean on him, not exactly, but the closeness was its own kind of warmth.

He said, “I never thought I’d like a city like this.”

She looked at him, curious. “Why not?”

He shrugged. “It always seemed too old. Too… finished. Like you couldn’t make anything new here.”

Liesa thought about it, then said, “That’s the best part. You don’t have to make anything new. You just add your piece to the story.” She smiled, soft and real.

They sat that way until the wind picked up, carrying the faint scent of wood smoke and brine from the docks further down the river. The sun was slipping lower, the water turning gold where it caught the light.

Liesa said, “I’m glad you came. I always wanted to show you my home.”

Andy replied, “Me too.”

The walk back from the river followed no logical path, but Liesa navigated it with a surety that seemed almost animal. She cut down narrow lanes that dead-ended in playgrounds, skipped the wider boulevards in favor of alleys lined with bike racks and graffiti. At first, Andy thought she was avoiding something, but it became clear she was simply following the old instincts—routes mapped in muscle memory from childhood, the fastest way between two points even if it looked like wandering.

As they walked, Andy felt the day shift. The easy openness of the afternoon lingered, but in the last few blocks, Liesa had grown quieter. Not withdrawn, not tense, but as if her attention was moving along a path parallel to their walk, flickering from window to window, taking in things invisible to him. She still smiled at his jokes and matched his stride, but the intervals between words got longer, her replies softening at the edges.

He waited for her to say something, but she kept her eyes mostly forward, jaw set in a way that could have been thought or concentration. They passed a closed barber shop, a statue of some local hero with a pigeon on its head, and a florist whose window was stacked floor-to-ceiling with buckets of tulips.

He finally asked, “Are you okay?”

Liesa’s lips twitched into a half-smile. “Ja. Just thinking.”

He wanted to ask, “About what?” but he let it rest.

After another few blocks, they turned onto a side street that was older than the rest, the kind of block where the row houses were set back just far enough for narrow front gardens. Some were jungles of overgrown rosemary and frost-burned sage; others had been weeded down to bare dirt and a single stunted shrub. The air here was different, quieter, as if the street had agreed to hold its breath for them.

Liesa’s pace slowed. She looked up the length of the block, then back at Andy, then up again. For a moment, she just stood, one foot on the curb, scanning the windows as if hoping for a sign.

Andy waited, watching her face. He could see something working behind her eyes, a set of gears winding up to a decision.

She said, voice barely above a whisper, “My father lives two streets from here.”

She didn’t look at him when she said it. Her hands went into her pockets, shoulders curling in.

Andy didn’t speak. He let the silence hold.

Liesa took a slow breath. “Before The HH, I had not seen him for two months. Not even a call.” She blinked, hard. “He doesn’t know about… anything, really. I always told myself I’d come back when I was ready.”

Andy still waited, letting her set the pace of the moment.

She said, “I think I want to go.” There was no question at the end, just the unpolished sound of a person saying a thing for the first time.

He asked, “Are you sure?”

Her laugh was short, almost a bark. “Nee. Not at all.” She started down the block, steps deliberate, every inch of her posture shouting uncertainty even as she moved forward.

Andy fell in beside her, close but not touching. He didn’t say another word.

The rest of the walk was silent. They passed two intersections and a bakery just about to close for the night, the air inside foggy with the scent of yeast and sugar. When they reached the right street, Liesa paused, looked at the row of houses with the careful assessment of a person checking for land mines. Then, without a word, she picked the narrowest house on the row, the only one with blue curtains in the window, and led Andy up the steps.

She rang the bell. The sound was a sharp, electric trill, and Andy could hear footsteps within almost immediately.

He glanced at Liesa, who had gone perfectly still. Not tense, not panicked—just waiting, every muscle held in anticipation.

The lock turned. The door opened on an older man with Liesa’s eyes and the kind of shoulders that, even after sixty years, still looked like they could break up a bar fight. He wore a gray henley and pressed navy trousers, sleeves rolled just enough to show the sinew in his forearms. His hair was clipped short at the sides and stood up stubbornly on top, more salt than pepper, and he had the careful posture of someone who was never certain how much of the world would arrive on his doorstep.

For a moment, he just looked at Liesa. The way you look at an apparition, or maybe a memory that’s gotten out of its box. His face shifted through a whole deck of reactions—first surprise, then a fleeting lightness, then something tight and complicated. It finished on welcome, but the welcome was deliberate, placed there like a heavy object to keep everything else from moving.

“Liesje,” he said, and in those two syllables there was a whole childhood, scoldings and birthdays and every lost Sunday between. His arms didn’t open, but his hands went loose at his sides, fingers twitching as if they wanted to reach but wouldn’t dare.

She said, “Hoi, Papa,” and her voice was calm, even gentle. She stood very straight on the stoop, chin up, eyes level with his.

He stepped back to let them in, wordless, and she followed. Andy came after, ducking his head slightly in the old, low-ceilinged entry.

The house was narrow, the kind that had been designed for heat and not for air or light. But it was warm inside, and the scent of coffee hung in the air. The walls were lined with framed photos, shelves of books, and a collection of little blue ceramic animals on a glass case by the stairs. In the living room, a piano sat in the corner, keys exposed, sheet music in a neat stack on top.

Liesa’s father closed the door and turned to face them. His eyes—so much like Liesa’s it was almost a joke—took in Andy, then went back to Liesa. He spoke, fast and low, in Flemish, the tone both questioning and a little incredulous.

Andy caught most of it: “Why didn’t you call? Are you okay? Is something wrong?” The words landed like stones, more anxious than angry.

Liesa replied in a careful voice, “I was in the city. I wanted to see you, that’s all.” She didn’t soften it, didn’t make excuses. She added, “I have someone with me.” Only then did she gesture at Andy.

The man’s gaze sharpened. He looked Andy up and down, not unfriendly but not deferential either. There was a quality of measurement, the same way a craftsman might sight down a board to check for warping.

Liesa said, in English, “This is Andy. He is the person I am with.” Her pause before the word “with” was half a second, but it hung there like a bead of water on glass.

Andy extended his hand, which the man took, the shake firm but not aggressive. Andy replied, “Meneer Claes. Bedankt dat u ons ontvangt.” Mr. Claes. Thank you for having us. He saw Liesa’s mouth twitch at the “u,” formal but respectful. Liesa’s father didn’t smile, but his grip relaxed a fraction. “Willem,” he said.

The older man gestured them to the living room, then disappeared for a moment to the kitchen. Liesa and Andy stood among the memories. Andy looked at the photos: Liesa as a child, a woman who must have been her mother, a pair of kids in matching pajamas—possibly her cousin, someone whose absence now made a negative space on the wall.

He caught Liesa’s gaze. She saw him looking, but made no comment.

Willem returned with three mugs of coffee, black and unsweetened, and set them on the table. He sat, but didn’t lean back—he kept his forearms on the tabletop, hands folded, like a man ready to get up and go to work at a second’s notice.

Liesa took the couch opposite, legs crossed, both hands around her mug. She wore the same careful smile Andy had seen in the bakery, but the rest of her was held flat and still, no animation or need to please. She looked more like herself than he’d ever seen, and also less like the Liesa from Chicago than he would have thought possible.

They sipped in silence for the first minute, and Andy could feel the house settling around them. The tick of a wall clock somewhere above, the faint lap of the radiator, the careful stillness of people who had not been in the same room for years. There was nothing of discomfort in the quiet; it was simply a family who had used up all their words a long time ago and had only the structure of habit to carry them.

Willem broke first, clearing his throat. His English was slow, the vowels round and the consonants softened by age. “You are from New York, now?”

Andy nodded. “Ja. But not for long. I moved from Chicago, maybe five years ago.”

Willem nodded back, an almost imperceptible dip of the chin, as if weighing the value of that decision. He looked at Liesa, then at Andy, and then at his hands. “Chicago is good city. Antwerp is smaller, but better for families, I think.” His accent slipped a bit on “families,” and he glanced at Liesa, the word floating, uncertain, before he moved on.

He asked how Andy and Liesa had met, and Andy explained in Flemish: at university, a few classes together, and then not for a long time, until they found each other again last year. The words came easier than he’d expected, and he caught the way Willem’s eyebrows raised.

“Your accent is not so bad,” Willem said, switching back to English, “for an American.”

Andy smiled. “I practiced. Liesa made me.”

“Good.” Willem allowed himself a real, if brief, smile. He set his mug down and folded his hands. He looked at Liesa with the careful directness of someone who had learned to ask only the questions he could bear to have answered. “And you are… working still? In art?”

There was no accusation in the question—only the bald fact of a parent needing to know. Andy saw the way Liesa squared herself, the small rearrangement of her spine. He realized her father didn't know, had never known, how his daughter had earned enough to help both of them.

“Mostly illustration now. Freelance. I do some mural work. Sometimes I help at the school, when they need.” Her English was brisk and even, stripped of the softness she used in America.

Willem nodded slowly, as if the answer was both expected and slightly unsatisfactory, but not unwelcome. “Your mother would have liked that,” he said. The sentence came out half-inhaled, the kind of thing that had probably surfaced and submerged a thousand times. “She always said you would find your way.”

Andy kept his eyes on his coffee. He thought about Liesa in a series of apartments in cities where nobody knew her, making ends meet in the only way available to her at the time, and the fact that her father had never known, and that she had kept it that way to spare him exactly that, so that he could keep the pride in his voice right now, uncontaminated, still intact.

"Maybe," Liesa said quietly, and did not look up from her mug.

Willem sipped his coffee, and for a while, the only sound was the faint tap of Willem’s thumbnail on the ceramic. Then he looked at Andy and asked, “And you? What is your work?”

Andy said, “I run a small company. Software. It is not very interesting.” He watched Willem absorb this, then added, “Liesa has a good mind for design.”

Willem looked at his daughter again, this time with an edge of pride, and said, “Always. Even when small, she could see how to make things better.”

Liesa ducked her head, but did not smile. “Thank you, Papa.”

The pause that followed was not awkward, but necessary; it let the words settle in the room before any of them dared to move on. Andy found himself looking at the piano in the corner, the way the keys shone against the old wood. He wondered if anyone played it now. He wondered if Liesa ever had.

Willem’s attention shifted, and the next question was a volley of quick Flemish, meant for Liesa alone: Is everything all right with your money? Is the apartment safe? Are you eating? Do you have friends? The questions came fast, overlapping, as if he'd been storing them up. Andy heard the shape of the worry underneath. Not the ordinary worry of a parent, but the specific, guilty worry of a man who had asked too much of his daughter once and had spent years trying to calculate whether she had survived it intact.

The voice was stripped of irony, the sort of worry that could have been asked on the way to school or as she left for prom.

Liesa answered each, methodical and steady: Yes, money is fine, she is careful, the apartment is safe. She eats well—she likes to cook, sometimes for other people. She has good friends, in fact she made several new ones recently. She is in love. Her face did not waver once.

Willem considered. Then he shifted focus to Andy: “She is a good girl. She works hard.”

Andy looked at Willem and said, simply, “I know.”

Willem’s lips pressed together, and he nodded once, a judgment delivered and accepted. There was pride, but also a suspicion that pride was dangerous to hold on to.

They drank more coffee. It was as if, having said what needed saying, there was no urgency left in the afternoon. Andy watched as Willem’s gaze drifted to the framed photo above the piano: a wedding picture, Liesa’s parents frozen in a kind of formal, unsmiling happiness. The woman’s hair was long and dark, her dress old-fashioned but elegant. The photo was a good thirty years out of style, but Willem had placed it where the light from the window fell on it every morning.

After a while, Willem set his mug down and leaned back just a little, an indication the interview was nearly done. “You stay for dinner?” he asked, not with the expectation of a yes, but as a matter of protocol.

Liesa said, “We cannot tonight, Papa. I have a meeting in the city.”

He nodded, unsurprised. “Next time, then.”

She smiled, gentle now, the tension draining from her. “Next time.”

They stood. Willem offered his hand to Andy again, and this time the shake was firmer, less a test than a seal. To Liesa, he gave a two-handed squeeze, the kind of embrace that can only be given when years have separated you from the habit of hugging.

Liesa stood very still in her father's hands for a moment, not pulling away, not leaning in. Then she said, in Flemish, low enough that it was almost private, “I'm glad I came, Papa.”

Willem's hands tightened once, brief and involuntary, then released. He said, “I love you, schat. Come back sooner, next time.” His voice was rough at the edges, his eyes glassy.

“I will,” she said, and Andy believed her.

At the door, Liesa glanced once more at the hallway, at the blue ceramics and the fading family photos. Andy saw the memory pass over her face, but she did not flinch or hurry away. She let the moment rest, and then she was out on the step, the cold air catching her breath and turning it silver.

They walked the block in silence, the sense of something settled hovering around them like an extra coat. When Andy finally looked at her, she was neither smiling nor crying; she was simply present, all the way down to her shoes, more in her body than he had ever seen her.

He said, “You did good.”

She looked at him, eyes bright but dry, and said, “Thank you.” She was quiet for a moment, looking at the street ahead. “You know what I realized, coming back here? The hardest part of growing up was never the money, or my father, or any of the things I thought it was.” She glanced at him, unhurried. “It was learning which parts of myself I was allowed to keep. Not the ones people wanted me to keep.” A beat. “The ones I wanted to keep.” She took his hand, then, palm to palm, and squeezed once.

The street was empty but for the echo of their footsteps, and neither of them felt the cold anymore.

The light was already gone gold by the time they reached the river, the streets thinning of people as if the city had a tacit agreement to leave the evening to locals and the ghosts of locals. Liesa guided them to a bar tucked between a bike rental kiosk and a shuttered newsstand. The windows looked out over the water, the surface of the Scheldt gone so bright and flat it seemed painted on the glass.

Inside was dark wood, the bar itself polished to a glaze, and most of the tables empty except for two old men playing chess and a woman nursing a newspaper and a wheat beer. Liesa chose a table by the window and sat facing the river, her silhouette caught in the reflection so that for a second, Andy saw two of her at once, the real and the echo.

She ordered for both of them—a local dubbel, the kind Andy could never find in the States—and when the bartender brought their glasses, she lifted hers and clinked it against his. The sound was soft, not celebratory but commemorative, like the closing of a chapter.

They sat that way for a while, the table so small that their knees touched under it, the heat of her shin pressed alongside his. Liesa didn’t say much, and Andy, learning at last, let the silence hold. He watched her watch the river, saw the way her eyes followed the lines of the bridges and the distant spires, and he tried to imagine what it would feel like to see your childhood rendered in glass and water and dusk.

Finally, Liesa spoke. “I didn’t want to go in,” she said, without preamble. “To the house.” She kept her eyes on the window, fingers wrapped around her glass. “I thought if I came here, maybe I’d just look at it, then walk away.”

Andy nodded. “I know.”

She gave a small laugh. “You always know, even when I don’t.”

He smiled into his beer. “Not always.”

She turned to him, the look on her face not accusatory but searching. “I didn’t know what I wanted from it,” she said. “With my father. With any of it. I thought maybe it would make something clear. But it didn’t.”

Andy said, “Maybe you got what you needed anyway.”

Liesa looked at him for a long time, then down at her drink. “He’s not a bad man,” she said, quietly. “I spent years trying to be angry. But he just… is what he is.” She shrugged, the gesture small and almost apologetic. “That’s the hardest part, I think. There’s no one to blame. No villain. Just the usual.”

She turned her glass in her hands. “He never knew,” she said. “What I did, to pay for things, after. I never told him.” She said it without drama, something she had long made peace with. “He would have been devastated. So I didn't tell him, and now I never will, because it would serve no purpose except to hurt him.” She looked at the river. “Some things you carry alone. Because you want to spare others.”

Andy looked at her for a moment, then said, “You don't have to carry it alone anymore. Sam knows. I know. It changes nothing, except that you don't have to be careful around us.”

Liesa looked at him, the question in her eyes more than her face.

“We know,” he said again, simply. “And we love you, and we're still here.”

She twisted her glass in her hands, not drinking from it. “I always wanted to bring you here,” she said. “To this place. When we were at UIC, I used to think about it. Showing you the city, this river.” Her voice was calm, but there was a tremor at the end that made Andy want to reach across and steady her.

He said, “I’m glad you did.”

She looked at him then, fully, and her face was more open than he’d ever seen it. Not the curated warmth, not the coyness she used to weaponize. It was the expression of someone who had finally put something down and was waiting to see if she could live without it.

Liesa reached for his hand, her fingers cool and strong. Andy met her halfway, their hands locking in a way that felt both practiced and entirely new. They sat that way, neither of them in a hurry, as the light on the Scheldt went from gold to amber to the particular blue of a northern evening.

She exhaled, a long and gentle sigh, and Andy felt his own chest loosen to match.

Outside, the river caught the last of the sun and reflected it back into the room, turning their hands to silhouettes. The chess players argued softly in the corner, the bartender polished a glass and pretended not to watch, and in the whole world there was only this table, this pair of hands, this hour carved out against the dark.

Andy squeezed her fingers, once, and she squeezed back.

They did not leave for a long time.