Isabelle looks sadly from her mother to the cookie. Even though she isn’t hungry, she wants to say thank you. She wants to say I’m sorry. She wants to reach across the table and squeeze her mother’s hand or, even more, to bury her head in her mother’s shoulder, a familiar yet now distant comfort.

Instead, she reaches for the cookie and breaks it carefully in half. Then she pours half of what she has left of her cocoa into her mother’s mug.

“Thank you,” her mother says, but Isabelle shakes her head and puts her fingers to her lips.

III

“Hold the elevator!” Isabelle hates to share the elevator with other people; there is something about being trapped in such a small space with someone for even the short length of time it takes to ride five stories that makes her nervous. She had seen their downstairs neighbor paying for a cab outside their building as she followed her mother inside, and she had quickened her step so that they could take the elevator up alone, before their neighbor entered the building. But they hadn’t been quick enough; now her mother fumbles for the button to hold the door open for the man. Isabelle hears his footsteps click faster across the lobby floor as he jogs nearer and then bursts into the elevator, panting slightly and smelling faintly of old taxi.

“Thank you,” he says, setting his briefcase down between his legs to shove his gloves into the pocket of his coat. “Four, please,” he says, but Ruth has already pressed the button for his floor.

He looks down at Isabelle as the elevator door slides shut. Isabelle looks back at him. He is older than her father; his hair is graying and his skin loose, but there is something young about his eyes, she thinks.

“You’re not the little girl who lives upstairs from me, are you?”

Isabelle nods. “This is Isabelle,” her mother says.

“Isabelle!” he says. “But you’re not the pianist, are you?”

Isabelle glances at her mother and then looks quickly to the floor. As far as her mother knows, she has not touched the piano in months.

“Isabelle used to take lessons,” her mother explains. “But not for a few months now.”

“Well, I’d say she doesn’t need them,” the man says. “She plays just fine on her own.”

Isabelle hears her mother clear her throat, but she doesn’t look up. She watches her mother shift her weight from one wet foot to the other, and then she sees the man’s hand reach down to lift his briefcase from between his legs as the elevator stops at his floor.

“Young lady,” he says as the door opens. “My wife and I enjoy your music very much.”

Isabelle gives a quick smile, then returns her eyes immediately to the floor before her mother can catch them with her own.