Anna leaned back against the couch, her eyes still focused on the screen, which by now was blank again. She turned to face Bill. Just when he had decided for sure that she had missed what he had said, she suddenly whispered, “Yes.”

Bill stared at her. “What is this, ‘yes’?” he asked, his voice rising. He couldn’t believe the implications of her answer—first, that she had actually understood his question, and second, that she had touched his slides.

“Yes, I took out the pictures of Naomi,” Anna said, her voice piercing the air in the room.

Bill sat stunned on the couch, paralyzed for a moment before roaring, “Why?”

Anna wiped her left eye under her glasses. “I didn’t think they belonged there, Bill, with so many other slides on those shelves—with all those slides of strangers from other countries, catalogued like that. I just didn’t think it was right.”

Her lucidity was jarring. It had been months since she had said something so coherent, so conceptually subtle, so unrelated to basic demands—so similar to the way she used to be. Bill wanted to take her in his arms and fly with her into the sky. Instead he asked, making his voice as gentle as he could, “And what exactly did you do with those slides?”

“I—I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?” Suddenly it seemed strange, atypical, even cruel and unjust, for her not to remember something. Bewildered, he asked again, “You don’t remember?”

“No . . . no, I—I don’t.”

A wave of rage rose up from Bill’s stomach. He felt himself beginning to shake, violently, fighting to stay seated, to stop himself from lunging at her, from screaming as loud as he could scream: You killed my baby!

Instead he clutched the arm of the couch with one hand, shaking, silently begging her to say more, to remember some tiny clue as to what happened to those pictures, or even to just prolong that moment when she had spoken so clearly, a moment of pure transparent light. But the moment proved fleeting. He watched her as she slowly closed up again, a blank expression falling over her face like a curtain. “I’m tired,” she suddenly said. “I’m very tired.”

Bill glanced at the clock. It was late, later than he had thought it was—or perhaps he too was beginning to lose track of time. They both stood up, and he escorted her to their bedroom, not wanting to find out whether she would be able to make it there without him.

They began to get ready for bed. This, at least, Anna understood. She still remembered how to sleep. As they slipped under the covers, Anna closed her eyes almost immediately. She had forgotten that he was there.