Ruth shut her eyes. “You showed her the sketchbook.”

“Yes.”

Ruth swallowed, the reason for Isabelle’s fury suddenly clear. “I thought that the sketchbook was going to be just between you and me.” Her voice was low and fast, just under control. “I let you have that sketchbook to study her drawings, not to discuss them with her. I thought I’d made that quite clear over the phone.”

“I must have misunderstood,” the doctor said. “I was not under that impression at all.”

“I see.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Ruth breathed in deeply through her nose, trying to steady her voice. “If you’d please leave the sketchbook with your secretary, I’ll be by later to pick it up.”

“I’ll do that. Again, I apologize.”

“Well.”

“We’ll see you next week, then?” the doctor said after a pause.

“No,” Ruth said. “I don’t think you will.”

“I’m sorry about that, Mrs. Carter. I would like to help Isabelle.”

Ruth snorted; she’d heard this too many times. “Well,” she said.

“I’ll leave the sketchbook with the secretary. But I would urge you to reconsider.”

Ruth hung up.

She laid her forehead down on her desk, pressing her skull as hard as she could against the wood until her head ached, the pain traveling dully from front to back, wrapping itself around her. It was not Dr. Steingold who misled her, she realized; it was hope that misled her, and she had allowed it—but it wouldn’t happen again, she thought bitterly. It couldn’t, because she had no more hope. The sound of Isabelle’s voice seemed suddenly a thing impossible to achieve, and she could only feel that she was the one to blame. Somewhere, she knew, everywhere, she went wrong.

Now, by the fire, Ruth shifts, tucks her legs beneath her, listening to Wilson talk about Africa. He wants to start out in South Africa and make their way north. First, he has said, he wants to spend time in Botswana, which to Ruth’s surprise he has described as lush, green, and swampy; when she thinks of Africa, she thinks of what he is describing now—vast grasslands with the occasional acacia tree.

“See, in Tanzania,” he is saying, “you have the Serengeti National Park—serengeti means ‘endless plain’ in the language they speak there, I can’t remember what it’s called. So you have the grasslands, but there’s also a huge crater, what’s it called, Ngorongoro, and also Mount Kilimanjaro. So there’s a lot to see in Tanzania.”

Ruth nods, taking a sip of her drink. “Yes,” she says. “And then what would be next?”

“From Tanzania, I’d say we keep going north through Rwanda. It’s very hilly, I read. They call it Land of a Thousand Hills, which I kind of like. Like I like serengeti.”

“And what’s in Rwanda?”