A Journey Summary

The narrator is on board an airplane. The narrator watches a mother, her thirteen-year-old son, and an infant. The trio leave the plane in an African country that until recently has been experiencing a civil conflict. In the absence of the trio, the narrator's imagination takes over and sees things from the perspective of the teenage boy.

The boy thinks about having returned to Europe with his mother while she had the baby. The father remained in Africa as a diplomat. The boy remembers months earlier he noticed that his parents had become quieter, and his father took him on more men only outings. While the boy notices that his father is more affectionate toward him, he is still troubled by his parents' quietness when together. The boy notices the physical changes in his mother, and he notices that his father...