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He is quieter than on the way there. The different kind of quiet — not the prepared quiet of someone managing something, but the settled quiet of someone who has been somewhere and is carrying it back.

I take his hand. Then I lean over. "Can I kiss you?"

He looks around the carriage. An elderly couple reading. A teenager with headphones. A man asleep. Then at me. "Briefly."

I kiss him briefly. When I pull back, his hand catches my jacket and he kisses me again — properly, unhurried, the Saturday evening version. His hand finds my knee.

The elderly couple don't look up from their books.

"Told you," I say.

Jan gives me a look, the one that means don’t, but his hand stays on my knee, which is the real answer. He turns to look at the landscape, his face settling into the quiet he gets when something has landed.

"Your father asked me three follow-up questions about infrastructure financing."

"I know. I could hear you from the kitchen."

"He's interested in the subject."

I look at him. "He's interested in you. That's what the questions mean."

Something moves across Jan's face — not quite surprise, not quite pleasure, something between the two that he is already starting to manage. He looks back at the landscape. "Your mother refilled my glass three times."

"Also a good sign."

He is quiet for a moment. “They’re…" He considers the word. "They're good people."

"Yes," I say.

"Your mother looked at you across the room at one point." He pauses. "The way she looked at you. I noticed it."

"What did you think?"

He looks at the window. "I thought: this is what it looks like when someone loves their child and is happy for them." A pause. "I'm not… I haven't had a lot of experience with that. From the outside."

I look at him.

"Jan," I say.

"I'm not saying it sadly," he says. Precisely. "I'm saying it as a fact. My family is different. More interior. Less demonstrative." He looks at me. "Yours aren't. And it was… it was good to see. That's all I'm saying."

I hold his hand.

We sit in the Saturday evening train and the landscape moves past and I think about my mother's hand on my arm in the kitchen and Jan in the sitting room with my father talking about infrastructure financing and the look on Jan's face when my mother refilled his wine.

This is who I am bringing to the world. Jan. Who prepares for things, reads rooms immediately, says difficult truths without decoration, and said I love you before there was any net.

I look at him. He is looking at the landscape, one hand still on my knee, his face in that settled quiet he gets when he has processed something and arrived somewhere. I shift slightly to face him.

"Jan," I say.

He turns. The full attention, unhurried.

"Yes."

"Thank you for today." I mean all of it — the peonies, the fourteen minutes in the wine shop, the infrastructure question, my father leaning forward.

He looks at me for a moment. Something in his expression softens — just briefly, just enough. "I should be thanking you."