“And what if he can’t? What if he’s just as useless as all the others?”

“He comes highly recommended. He’s dealt with this kind of thing before.” She’s not sure how she thinks she’ll persuade Wilson when she isn’t convinced of anything herself.

Kind of thing, Wilson thinks. He pushes back his chair and hurries to their bedroom, returns with Isabelle’s drawing. “Look,” he says, unfolding the drawing and handing it to Ruth. He turns on the light and stands above her as she looks down at the drawing. “Isabelle did it at Luigi’s the other night.”

Ruth stares at the lion, at its mouth open wide, its deep black throat. It is a troubling image. “And you think this means she wants to go to Africa?”

Wilson shrugs. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

Ruth folds the drawing back up and hands it to Wilson.

“No,” he says. “Keep it. Maybe this new shrink can explain it. Or something. I don’t know.” He turns the light off. Ruth looks up at him. The reflection of candlelight trembles in his eyes.

“I’ll show it to him,” she says.

Maggie plods into the room and leans against Wilson’s leg. He strokes her absently and finishes his wine. “I should probably take this beast out.”

Ruth nods. Wilson pushes back his chair and walks into the hall. Maggie has moved over to Ruth now and rested her chin on Ruth’s knee as Ruth scratches her behind the ears; Wilson waits for a minute in the doorway and watches them before calling Maggie after him.

Ruth puts her finger to her lips, gesturing in the direction of Isabelle’s room just down the hall.

But Isabelle is awake still. Sleep tonight seems impossible. She lies on her side in bed, facing the clock, watching the colon blink between the numbers that stand for hours and those that stand for minutes. She hears her father call for the dog, and then she hears the rattle of Maggie’s collar and the clumsy sound of her paws against the carpet as she scrabbles down the hall, always eager to go out in snow—only eager to go out in snow. She hears the elevator groan in its shaft as it ascends to their floor, and then she hears its doors thud shut with a sound that seems to Isabelle somehow final. She shudders and rolls onto her back, takes a breath, and then gets out of bed. She crosses through the unlit room into the bathroom and sits down on the lowered toilet lid. The bathroom tiles are cold beneath her feet, and so she pulls her knees to her chest inside her nightgown. The room is cast in a tinny glow from the streetlamps outside, and the blurry shadows of the topmost branches of the huge oaks that line the park waver on the ceiling. A garbage truck squeals to a stop outside; she listens to the hiss and steam of its iron arms as they close in around garbage bags piled on the curb, the rumble of the garbage tumbling into the truck.