January 27th, 1895:

Mr. Klaas Spaans,

I will be taking custody of my daughter, Kaatjie. Please send her things at earliest convenience and advise what date she is to be next collected from the school.

Don Juan Dempsey

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Miss Spaans,

This is your new address, in case you need it. Someone will come to collect you when Hogwarts lets out for the summer.

Hope this is what you wanted, with that Christmas stunt.

Your father, I suppose,
DJD

Kaatjie Spaans

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   Lowri Dempsey

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January 28th, 1895

Mr. Don Juan Dempsey,

Does that mean I should change my last name?

Kaatjie

Miss Spaans,

Probably. Maybe not in the middle of the school year. We'll settle it over the summer.

Don't call me "Mr." when you write, it's weird.

DJD

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He wrote the letter, realized the hypocrisy, and rewrote before sending:

Kaatjie,

You will. You don't have to yet. We'll get it sorted over the summer. If you want to start writing Dempsey in the meantime, I don't mind. I don't know that it matters.

You don't have to call me "Mr" in letters.

DJD

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   Lowri Dempsey

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January 29th, 1895

Don Juan Dempsey,

How exciting! I hope it does not confuse my professors too much.

If I'm not calling you Mr., is there something I should be calling you?

Kaatjie (Dempsey?)

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   Lowri Dempsey

If only the dutch words for father or papa didn't sound exactly like the English ones, he might have been able to stomach them better. As it was, he found himself rather at a loss for how to answer her question.

Kaatjie,

If anyone says they know what you "should" be doing in this scenario they're probably making things up. You can call me whatever you like, I suppose.

DJD

  

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By the first week of March he had a solicitor. It was his parents' solicitor, really; this entire thing was his parents' cause more than this. Probably his mother's, strictly speaking. Don Juan had the sense that Eamon was humoring her but would not have expended a good deal of his own effort to acquire a grandddaughter, if left to his own devices. In any case, the Dempseys had a solicitor, and Don Juan had been obliged to meet with them to go over the facts of the case. None of these facts were a surprise to him — he had lived them, after all — but having to slog through them and witness his mother's reaction to each new detail, and to watch the solicitor sort each one matter-of-factly into the buckets of those which worked against them and those which did not, put things into a new perspective.

There was one moment from the first meeting with the solicitor that stuck in his mind, replaying at inopportune moments and ruining otherwise peaceable days: the question posed to him, in that level and unreadable tone the solicitor always seemed to use, of what Kaatjie was likely to say if she was asked for her opinion on the matter. It was unlikely any court would ask an eleven-year-old girl for her opinion, the solicitor acknowledged, but in the event it did happen, would Kaatjie want to live with the Dempseys? And Don Juan had gaped at them for a moment before finally coming up with I don't know, though his expression beforehand had been answer enough already.

He'd asked her essentially that question before, and in doing so he'd made her cry. This had caught him twice already, once on Christmas morning and again in the solicitor's office; when he was forced to think of it he was suddenly at a loss for witticisms or self-defense. In over a decade of neglect, this was the only moment he actually regretted. He would say whatever his solicitor told him to when they went to court, if they went to court, but he didn't regret letting Adriana raise her alone after she'd kicked him out. He didn't regret letting Klaas keep her after Ana's death. He didn't regret not making an effort to spend time with her or get to know her. Whatever his parents were doing, he was still very firmly of the opinion that she was better off without him in her life, in any capacity. But he did regret how their one interaction had ended, and he couldn't quite banish the memory of her face with tears streaming.

He didn't ask the solicitor before sending her a letter. He probably should have; if she was siding with her uncle than anything he sent her could become evidence used against them. But this was hardly the least advisable thing he had done recently.

Kaatjie,

Do you want to hear some of the things I remember about your mother?

DJD

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   Kaatjie Spaans

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March 11th, 1895

It took her a few days to reply; she was defensive of anything to do with her mother, and she didn't know what her father would say about Ana.

Don Juan Dempsey,

Sure.

Kaatjie

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   Lowri Dempsey

Kaatjie,

Alright. This was all a very long time ago, so I'm likely misremembering details.

When I first met your mother I spoke maybe forty words of Dutch. It wasn't necessary to learn much as I was living in hotels during my tour and the people who worked at or stayed at hotels mostly spoke English. When I talked with other locals they used whatever English they had and always seemed apologetic about any misunderstandings or anything they couldn't convey. Adriana knew some English and she did use it but if she didn't know the English word for something she would slip straight into Dutch instead, and then if I didn't follow she would give me this look, like Dutch words were the most basic human intelligence and she thought me daft for not being able to follow. She insisted upon herself in that way. She was never deferential. So I learned Dutch.

I used to write her poems. They weren't very good, but I was young and stupid and my upbringing had conditioned me to believe that being in love meant writing poetry, so I wrote her a lot of poems, mixing the languages together. She would critique my choice of vocabulary for the Dutch parts, as though she expected I had enough of a grasp of the language to have picked any given word intentionally, and she had enough of an ear for it to point out where my rhythm had gone off even in the English bits. I'd been presenting her with poems for weeks before she pointed out that I'd used a particular phrase before, and that was how I discovered she was keeping them and reading them again, even after she told me they were rubbish.

I never met her family because I never paid calls. I would see her out in the town during the day and follow her around and talk to her while she did errands, and then once I learned where she lived I would come at night and throw pebbles at her window until she came to the garden and we would talk through the fence. I suggested we marry through that fence. The next day she left her house ostensibly to do her usual errands but met me at the church instead. She didn't pack a bag, so after she came back to the hotel with me that night we spent the next day buying her all new things. Your grandfather threatened to disown her if she didn't come back home but she was confident he was bluffing, and it turned out she was right. Adriana would never lose a battle of wills.

We did a lot of traveling. It was what I was meant to be doing anyway, on tour, and we'd felt the need to get out of her hometown while her father worked through his mood. We always went by riverboat if it was available, because Ana liked the scenery. She pretended not to understand art primarily, I believe, to antagonize me. When I defended or critiqued a piece she called this "talking pretty nonsense," but she would smile indulgently and let me continue.

The first time either of us gave any thought to the question of where we would live was after she discovered she was pregnant. That was the first time we fought, too. She didn't want to move to Ireland to "live among strangers" (we had made no attempt yet for her to meet my family). We argued for hours. At one point she locked me out of the hotel room. I went out to drink and when I came back the door was still locked, so I climbed in a window. She wasn't surprised to see me, and we went to bed. We didn't talk about the question of where to live again, but a few days later we started making plans for me to take her home to introduce her to my family.

This letter is too long. Sorry. I don't know if you even care about any of this. I suppose I thought you might want to hear what she was like when I knew her, but I don't know. We were both so foolish then, and none of it matters now.

DJD

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March 16th, 1895

Don Juan Dempsey,

You know what's funny? Whenever we were in Oostzaan, not traveling, my governess would teach me English. I don't know if my Opa - Grandpapa - insisted on it or Mama, but I did learn.

Mama did teach me poetry, though. Mostly the Idealists, and the Romantics, and sometimes the Transcendentalists. She told me once that your family were poets, but she didn't talk much about you. And of course Opa didn't disown her, of course she was right — did you know he paid for the house I used to live in?

She liked art, but she 'liked what she liked and didn't like what she didn't.' We'd go to museums and galleries together when we traveled and she'd tell me what each piece was. Did she do that with you, too?

I like knowing what she was like. I miss her; I miss Opa, too. Mama and I would travel every summer, mostly in Southern Europe. And on Sundays when Opa was alive, we would always do dinner at his house in Amsterdam, after church.

Kaatjie

  

He hadn't expected to be so affected by anything Kaatjie had to say, but the image she painted of Ana had him feeling suddenly sentimental. Adriana teaching Kaatjie poetry, taking her to look at art, quietly insisting that she be taught English — it seemed very much as though she were preparing her to be a Dempsey someday. Of course she never would have initiated a reconciliation; far too stubborn for that. But it seemed clear to him now that she had been ready for one. How long had she been holding out hope that he would return the same way he always had before, climbing in the window and shrugging sheepishly at her in lieu of an apology? But he had been busy ruining his life in a dozen other ways, and too much of a coward to every try to fix something he had broken. She deserved better than me, he thought, but of course he couldn't write something so incriminating.

Kaatjie,

That's probably for the best, her not talking much about me. I imagine she didn't have many good things to say.

She never did meet my family, in the end, but I'm sure you'll like them. Your aunts at least are all quite excited to meet you. Hope our Sunday dinners rise to your expectations.

DJD

  

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