Ruth has turned back to the window. Her head is down, and a strand of hair arches up from her head on its way back to where her elastic has gathered all her hair together.

“And we can go as soon as we’ve finished lunch. We can use the weather as an excuse.”

“No, Wil, I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to apologize.” She lets out a loud breath. “It’s just Jimmy, and then here, and now cousins, and the dog, and do you know school starts two weeks from tomorrow?”

Wilson sniffs and puts the record onto the turntable. “I know,” he says, though he hadn’t been aware of the precise date, and liked it that way. Now there’s a countdown: fourteen days. What the hell in fourteen days is going to change things he can’t imagine.

Ruth puts her hands on her hips and turns around. “I just don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re going to do.” She squeezes her eyes shut and then opens them wide. “About anything.” She brushes her hands against her thighs, as if she has put away the topic. She sniffs. “I just saw your mother and Isabelle on their way back from the barn,” she says. She looks at the phonograph player, the record finally ready on the table. “Finished with that?”

Wilson nods. “Think so,” he says, and gently, he places the needle in the record’s groove. The speaker crackles as the record spins, and both Ruth and Wilson stare at the machine. The record wobbles and spins, wobbles and spins, and they watch and they wait for the music to come, the air thick with anticipation, but finally it is clear that even after all Wilson’s work something isn’t right—maybe the wires are wrong, or the needle is too worn after all, or the amplifier isn’t picking up its signals, or the transducer isn’t converting—and the needle traces the groove deeper into the record, far beyond where the music should have begun, but no, something is not right; it could be anything, really, Wilson has no idea. It seems a long moment of just staring, a moment, he thinks, like that after a child has fallen and cannot decide the best way to react, whether to let loose a wail or to brush off and keep on going. Finally he blinks and looks up at his wife. Ruth has a hand over her mouth, covering what Wilson fears is an expression of pity, but then when his eyes meet hers, though hers are filled with tears, she lowers her hand and starts to laugh.