“Oh!” Wilson can hear the clink of a spoon against china. “Sharon! She didn’t understand the horses. I don’t know what a person like that is thinking!”

“You got rid of her?”

“She was dreadful.”

“She was there for all of a week, Mother. She came highly recommended.”

“Well, I don’t know by whom. I certainly don’t recommend her.”

Wilson sighs. “So now no one’s there to help?”

“Sue comes by. It’s fine.”

Wilson lifts his pen and makes a note to call his brother; his mother is too old, he thinks, to be walking an icy driveway twice a day with buckets full of feed.

“How is Isabelle?”

Wilson sits forward in his chair to doodle, circle after circle. “The same,” he says.

“Still not speaking, then.”

“No.”

“Hmm. And Ruth?”

“Ruth is fine, I think,” Wilson says. “Considering. Maggie’s not, though. The vet called this morning. The biopsy was bad. She may need more treatment.”

“She ought to see Dr. Marks when you come up. No more of this city veterinarian nonsense.”

When you come up. It has been tradition since Isabelle was born to go see Wilson’s mother the weekend before Christmas; this year, the thought of it takes him by surprise. Since nothing is as it normally is, he hadn’t even considered their usual visit, and it is perhaps the realization that he had forgotten it that surprises him more than anything else. Normally, it is a part of their Christmas ritual, like the pageant on Christmas Eve and the opening of stockings Christmas morning. This year, silent, Isabelle won’t be much of a visitor. This year, he will have to consult with Ruth.

“Dr. Bremer is a good vet,” Wilson says finally.

“Well.” He hears his mother sip her tea. Radio voices murmur in the background. He can picture the radio, an ancient, dusty thing, perched amid the clutter of catalogs and unopened mail on the kitchen counter. He loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his shirt; his office is so hot that, were the temperature in here the temperature outside, all the buildings would have their air-conditioning on. He looks up at the pictures on the shelf behind his desk; there is one of Ruth and Isabelle sitting on a rock, one of Ruth from years ago, when they’d first married, one of himself and his brothers, one of Maggie and Isabelle sitting in a leaf pile under the apple tree. There are dried leaves caught in Isabelle’s hair, and her face is flushed with fall. She is mid-laugh, tossing a handful of leaves above Maggie’s head. Wilson looks at that photograph, and his heart drops.

“She must be very sad,” his mother finally says.

“What?”

“Isabelle,” she says.

Wilson blinks. Sad, he thinks. Such a heavy, thudding word, so simple, so final, so wise. “We’re thinking of going to Africa,” he says.

“Africa!”