“I’ll show you,” Wilson said. He stood in front of the projection on the wall, pointing to a small lion in the corner of the image. Field grass and the headlights of the safari jeep seemed painted on his back. When he turned around, he stepped into the path of his own image. His young face hovered over his old face, his young body over the old. Then he stepped away, like a ghost of himself, leaving that young self grinning and pinned against the wall.

Ruth finds Wilson’s hand with her own beneath the covers and gives it a gentle squeeze.

“I showed it to him,” she says.

“Showed what to who?”

Ruth’s mouth twists in frustration. “The drawing, to the shrink! What did you think I was talking about?”

Wilson shrugs in the darkness, but his heart begins to beat a little faster as he thinks about Isabelle’s drawing, and the way she loved those foreign dolls, and how when they go to Africa she can choose her own—one from Kenya, one from Ethiopia, maybe one from Madagascar. “And?” he says. “Did the guy seem any good? What he say? What did he think about the drawing? Did he think Africa was a good idea?”

“Did he think Africa was a good idea?”

Wilson pauses. “Yes,” he says. “Going to Africa. Getting Isabelle out of here for a while, showing her something she hasn’t seen before.”

“Wilson.” Ruth turns her head to look at her husband. His eyes glint in the dark. He blinks. “I don’t think you’re thinking.”

Wilson blinks again. Ruth looks up toward the ceiling so that he can see her profile, backlit by the green glow of the stereo lights on the shelf beside her. He is thinking, he thinks. “I am.”

“Wilson. This has nothing to do with Africa.”

“Sure it does,” Wilson says. “She did that drawing. There’s something to that drawing.”

“I know it,” Ruth says. “Whether consciously or not, there is meaning in everything we make.” She feels herself blush. “The shrink said that.”

“And the drawing is of Africa,” Wilson says.

“What I think is that you want to go to Africa.”

“I’ve been to Africa.”

“I’d rather have her at school than in Africa come January.”

Wilson turns his head, opens his mouth to say what he shouldn’t have to, when Ruth interrupts him. “I know,” she says. “I’m sorry, I know you would, too.”

They are quiet.

Finally, Ruth takes a breath. “Regardless,” she says, “I wanted to thank you for suggesting that we show that drawing to the shrink. Whatever she’s trying to communicate by it.”

Wilson flattens his lips.

“He seems good,” she continues.

“Well, good.”