Her mother is helping Maggie from the car. Her father gestures toward them with his chin, and grudgingly, as her mother leads Maggie toward the crosswalk, Isabelle follows. The light is just beginning to blink, warning them that soon it will change, but she knows there is time enough to make it across if they hurry. She steps off the curb; her mother puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s wait,” she says, looking down at Maggie. Maggie settles on the corner, chin between her paws.

Isabelle turns around. Her father is in discussion with Brian. She can see his mouth moving, his hands gesturing. Brian nods, nods again, his eyes getting smaller and smaller as her father continues to talk at him. She glances up at her mother. Her mother has also turned around, but instead of watching Brian nod at gestures and commands, her eyes are raised to the building’s windows. Isabelle follows her gaze, counting five flights up to their floor—where the windows are lit! So Jimmy must be there, she thinks, and just as she is thinking this, a shape appears in the living room window, and “Isabelle!” she hears her mother say, sudden and panicked.

“I want you to go! Go! Hurry, go with your father!”

Isabelle looks back toward the car and the awning where her father and Brian had been standing; they have gone inside. She feels her mother’s hand on her back, urging her toward toward the building, and suddenly she is afraid. She doesn’t know what she is afraid of, exactly; she is afraid because her mother is afraid, and her mother is never afraid. She looks at her mother; her mother’s eyes are wide and worried. “Go! Go! Go, hurry, go!”

Isabelle feels hot, feels cold, doesn’t know what she feels as she races back to the building, stumbling over her laces twice. She is aware of the oddest sensations: her pulse in her ear, the ragged edge of toenail catching on her sock, a quivering just beneath her right eye. She does not wait for the lobby doors to open for her; she thrusts the weight of her entire body against them, but her fingers cannot work the latch, and she peers through the bars and glass in panic as Brian crosses the lobby to open the doors for her, almost falls through them when he does.