“Okay.” She hesitates. Perhaps she recognizes the play. Perhaps she senses me gripped by something more disruptive than a headache. “I’m sorry you aren’t feeling well. How was your day otherwise?”

I pause, even though I’ve already prepared this answer. “It was enlightening.”

“Really? Sounds far more interesting than mine. What happened?”

“Oh, let’s not talk about me. How are you?”

She finds her place on the couch and says, “Okay.” But she leaves it at that. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. You’re acting funny.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Must be my head.”

She waits for me to elaborate. I don’t. The sun won’t set for another hour, but its white light has shifted to rose gold. Cast in the glow, Elizabeth looks like a porcelain doll as she becomes aware of the quiet—aware of our isolation from every other living creature in the world.

She asks, “Where’s Jonah?”

There it is. Does she always look for him right away? Have I only now noticed? “He’s gone.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. I just decided it was time for him to go.”

She tucks her chin into her neck. “You asked him to leave?”

“Yes.”

I observe every faint violation of her controlled stillness when she asks, “Is everything okay?” There is fear in her voice. There is uncertainty.

“You know, Elizabeth, I think it will be.”

There is desperation in her eyes. There is regret.

I say, “We have been dealing with some pretty unusual circumstances around here.”

She nods.

“I think we all wish none of this had ever happened.”

Fear, uncertainty, desperation, and regret. “Robert—”

“And I think Jonah will feel better if he gets away from the place where something so bad has happened. A thing like that can do long-term damage, you know. It can traumatize a person.”

She shivers.

“I think he’ll cope better if he isn’t sleeping below the site of that trauma, don’t you?”

She nods slowly, assessing before offering, “It’s traumatic for us, too.”

“Yes. Yes it is.” I take a sip of my drink. “You look very pretty in this light.”

She blinks and blinks again so slowly I wonder if perhaps she’s fallen asleep, and maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe we could both close our eyes and start again tomorrow, letting this all be a bad dream. So I wait, but she is awake and alert when she says, “Sometimes I think I’m made for this life. Sometimes there’s no place else I’d rather be. And then sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing here.”