Wilson blinks. He is wide awake now. He tries to let himself be lulled by the falling snow, by the infrequent sweep of headlights from passing cars, by Ruth’s breath against his neck, even now and slow with sleep. He glances at the clock on the bedside table. It is still his birthday. The blue of the clock numbers reflects in the glass of water beside it and casts in a neon glow the folded piece of white paper Wilson has set there beside his wallet and the car keys. He has looked at this paper many times tonight already, but he reaches for it on the bedside to unfold and scrutinize again.

He looks at the paper, ragged-edged and palm-size, by the light of the clock. A lion drawn in red looks back at him, his huge mouth open in a gaping roar. His teeth are sharp, his mane wild, and his mouth tunnels into blackness. He is sitting underneath a black tree, one that is low-branched and reaching from the sweep of wind cutting across the plain.

After they had paid at the register for dinner tonight, Wilson returned to the table to leave the tip, though he had the cash to leave it to begin with. But he wanted the excuse to return to the table alone; he wanted to see what Isabelle had drawn, what she had covered with her plate while they ate. He returned to the table just after it had been cleared, and the busboy was about to strip the paper off the table when Wilson stopped him and quickly ripped his daughter’s drawing from among the wine stains and cake crumbs surrounding it.

He squints at it now again and wonders how his daughter knew to draw the tree that way. He wonders what else she knows if she knows what a tree looks like in Africa, little things, like what a cactus looks like in the desert, or how to draw a Buddhist temple. He wonders what else she’s learned from those books of hers. He holds the drawing closer to his face. Africa. Maybe it’s not a bad idea after all. He makes a mental note to dig out his slides from the attic tomorrow, if they’re there, to maybe contact his travel agent this week.

Outside, Isabelle shivers once, not so much with cold—she is warm inside her father’s down—as with the idea of it, the idea of nighttime, darkness, snow. She’s not sure why exactly she’s come out here, and so to give herself some sense of purpose, she’s told herself that she will not go in until the footprints she has left across the porch have been snowed over. She peers over her shoulder. She hasn’t been out for long, but already the snow is doing its work and the footprints behind her are losing definition. Across the street and beyond the roadside trees, she can see Mr. Sullivan’s old house. Normally nothing but a hulking black shape at night, tonight the house is alive; the downstairs windows glow, and smoke whips from the chimney. She vaguely remembers the quiet ambulance that came to take Mr. Sullivan away, and how her father had explained to her that he had died in his sleep, which was the best way to die. It strikes her that Mr. Sullivan was the last person to light a fire in that fireplace until now, and maybe the last person who had touched the light switch, or used the bathroom, or run his hand up the banister. She would never want to live in a house where someone had died.