My hands, in their usual habit, hold tight to my camera. We are here in the same place, Ruth and I, but if we each told our story of the aquarium, the two would be completely different, like we’re experiencing this on opposite hemispheres. But isn’t that what pictures are for? To show each other our stories?

Is it possible, even through the highest-quality lenses, for two people to really, truly see the same picture?

I have a couple of good shots of Ned the turtle, but none with Ruth in them. I keep clicking through my camera, scrolling past photos of sharks and turtles and the statues out front, up to the most recent ones. My stomach does that clutch thing when I hit the magic shot, the one that will be my post for the day. It’s all silhouette. Ruth and the little girl, backlit in underwater blue. Ruth’s shadow finger is pointing at a tiny trio of fish and the girl’s silhouetted face is pointed up in awe.

“Just When I Needed You Most,” Randy VanWarmer, 1979.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We have a long drive ahead of us. It’s about seven hours between Houston and Fort Stockton, where we plan to stay for the night.

I tell myself it doesn’t matter at all if Ruth is nicer to strangers sometimes. I mean, she was helping a little girl, right? That’s a good thing.

Ruth looks very pale this morning. Paler than I’ve seen her in a while. I want to bring her soup and her old stuffed animal and the perfect songwriting gig, like Ruth sometimes talks about, all served with a magic kind of medicine that will make anything hurting feel better—one hundred okay—just like that.

Something Magic, like a Treasure Hunt? Maybe?

I really, really hope so.

Tomorrow when we get to Arizona it will be time for Something Magic. And as far as magic is concerned, it’s good timing. I could use the extra help.

On the original trip, our Something Magic day landed on our stop in Little Rock, Arkansas. It started out as an awful day for me, because I’d lost Murphy somewhere the night before. I’d torn apart our hotel room looking for him. I looked under all the blankets, under the beds, in every drawer, even in the shower, and nothing. Ruth told me that because Murphy’d happened to go missing on Something Magic day, it meant he was off doing something magical, and that change was magic, even if it seemed hard at first. She told me it was all going to be okay, but even that didn’t make me feel better.