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wet his mustache by pulling his lower lip over it, pressing it flat with his thumb and index finger. Aaron didn’t know what to say. This was not your average revelation. It was a fucking bombshell. He thought he knew a thing or two about Sigerius, he thought he understood what this man, whom he looked up to despite desperately trying not to, had dealt with his entire life, understood the path to success his life had taken, the essentials of that life, and now he discovered he knew absolutely nothing. (That sensation of ignorance, he realized later, was something he should have just got used to: it was the story of his life in Enschede. He never knew anything.)
    “Eight years,” Sigerius said loudly; the bartender, quite a bit closer to them now, was scrubbing the draining racks. “The prosecutors demanded ten plus mandatory psychiatric treatment. But he impressed them at the psychiatric observation clinic … yeah,there, he did well,” and here he lowered his voice, “entirely compos mentis. My son is not at all stupid.”
    As though it were a stiff drink rather than tonic water, he put the glass to his lips and drained it. He set the empty glass down with gentle precision on the broad cherrywood bar.
    The train slowed down, the suburbs of Brussels slid into view, the passengers standing in the aisle peered out, craning their necks at the gray, haphazard urban sprawl. Tineke, who had reopened her eyes, brought a small mirror and dark-red lipstick out of a red-leather handbag, painted her wrinkled mouth with a steady hand, repacked the accessories and stared, scowling, at a point just between Aaron and the man next to him.
    Wilbert Sigerius. He had never met the fellow, after all these years the fascination had long since faded. Still, it occurred to him that everything he had found out about her stepson over the course of his Enschede years must have been just as awful for Tineke as for Sigerius. She had contributed two healthy daughters, girls to whom they had given a wholeheartedly devoted, not to mention an indulgent and privileged, upbringing; Joni and Janis had both grown into outgoing, stable, at times maddeningly rational adults. Sigerius, on the other hand, had saddled her with that viper.
    The train trundled into Brussels Central Station and shuddered to a halt. The crowd in the aisle moved slowly toward the stillshut doors: waiting quietly for salvation, a hundred silent heads in isolated prayer. Tineke didn’t budge. He could just as easily stay in the train until Brussels South, although there was a train to Linkebeek from Central as well. The girl removed her chewing gum from her black-lined mouth and reached across Tineke’s lap toward the metal rubbish bin. Then she stood up, brushed against his leftknee, and joined the current of disembarking passengers. Now Joni’s mother stood up too and, her back to him, removed a tartan roller-suitcase from the luggage rack. Seen from behind, with those slender, pointy hips, he would never have recognized her.
    On an impulse, he decided to get off, he wasn’t sure exactly why. Should he let this complete coincidence simply evaporate into nothing? All he had to do was stay put, and the meeting wouldn’t even have taken place. His heart pounding, he left the train, the stony smell of the platform filled his lungs. Almost against his will he pursued Tineke, maintaining a five-step distance, as she trotted up the stairs toward the central hall. Once in the light-brown marble open space, she set the valise down on its back wheels and dragged it into the bustle. Just inside the main entrance she took a cell phone from the pocket of her maroon wool overcoat, punched in a number, and started to talk. He saw her step into Brussels, she was gone, and again he hesitated.
    Instead of returning to his platform, instead of
not
living, he ran after her, into the open air. He scanned the shadows cast by the streetlamps. She was not part of the throng at the intersection