They are quiet for a moment. They stare at each other. “Jesus,” Ruth finally says. “You’re right. Wilson, we are fooling ourselves. That drawing of Africa—you’ve run with the Africa bit, I’ve run with the art bit—and where the hell are we going? We are getting nowhere!” She sighs loudly, stares into the flames. After a moment, she speaks again. “You know I fired the shrink?”

“What?” Wilson says. “Why?”

“I shouldn’t have. But I did. I was angry. He showed her the sketchbook. He wasn’t supposed to show her the sketchbook, and he fucking showed her the sketchbook, and now she is absolutely furious. I mean, she is never going to trust me again. Fuck!”

“Ruth.”

Ruth brings her fist to her forehead and begins to cry.

“Ruth.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore. I never knew what to do.”

“This isn’t going to last forever,” Wilson says, leaning over to take his wife’s hand. “It can’t last forever.”

This is the posture they are in when Isabelle appears like a shadow in the doorway—Ruth with the knuckles of one hand against her forehead, the other hand in Wilson’s, Wilson himself half out of his chair, almost on his knees, his free hand outstretched, as if beseeching his wife to stop, please stop crying.

It is past her bedtime, but no one has been in to say good night. She had tucked herself into bed and turned off the lights, but she could not fall asleep. It was the anticipation of her father cracking her door, whispering good night, that kept her awake at first, and then it was the fear that he wouldn’t at all, and that she would lie awake all night waiting. She crept down the hall in search of her parents, increasingly aware of a sound she didn’t immediately recognize, one that both lured her on and warned her off. It sounded at first like the strange, choking call of some animal, but Isabelle knew as she neared the living room—really had known all along—that it was the sound of her mother crying, and her chest went cold with fear.

As she stands in the doorway, any anger she felt earlier toward her mother evaporates; all she wants now is for her mother to stop crying. Please stop! she wants to beg. Please, please stop! and she knows that if she said this, then her mother would stop. It is all within her power, she thinks, but at the same time it is not within her power, not anymore.