She sighs as she sets down the last card that the mantle can hold, and then she crosses the room to put the remaining cards out on the piano. The lid is open, and without first thinking, she begins to lower it so as to provide a flat surface for the cards—but then she stops. Last week, she remembers, the piano lid was closed; she knows this with certainty because she had set a vase of short-lived poppies on it. That it is now open means that Isabelle must have been playing; neither she nor Wilson knows how. So the downstairs neighbor really has been hearing Isabelle play, Ruth thinks with a little envy; though he had aroused her suspicion, she thought it possible that he might have been mistaken, that what he was hearing was music from the stereo, or that he was remembering the music that Isabelle used to play, when she still did. Or when she still played when Ruth was home.

She runs her fingers over the keys, imagining Isabelle’s fingers there. She glances toward the Christmas tree then, and the needles that have fallen to the carpet beneath it. Though part of her resists the urge, she crosses the room and gathers up a small handful of the needles. These she spreads out across the keys—just a few, but enough so that Ruth will be able to tell by their absence when her daughter next plays. Though why she wants to catch Isabelle like this she’s not sure; what does it matter whether or not Isabelle plays if Ruth isn’t going to hear it anyway? But, somehow, it does matter. She steps back to survey her work, pleased. She lifts the last cards from where she has left them on the piano bench and sets them instead on the windowsill, leaving the lid of the piano open as Isabelle has left it.

In the other room, the phone is ringing, and so Ruth sets the final card down and hurries to answer it before the machine picks up and Isabelle’s voice announces that no one is home—a recording that seems both inappropriate to keep yet a terrible admission to erase, and one that she tries at any lengths to avoid hearing.

“Ruth,” she hears Wilson say. “Ruth.”

The somber tone of his voice frightens Ruth. She swallows. “What is it?” she says.

There is a pause. “Lunch,” Wilson says finally. “What would be better for you—if we went to the Mexican place on the West Side or this new diner in Midtown?”

Relief and annoyance flow through Ruth’s body at once. Why is it so difficult for Wilson to settle on a restaurant? A restaurant is a restaurant is a restaurant. “What do you mean, better for me? I’m not the one eating.”

“No, I mean which is closer to your appointment? Which is more convenient for you?”