She lets her eyes wander to the bookcase beside her desk and to the bottom shelf, where she keeps her legal reference books. It has been months now since she last had cause to use one of them, and it seems that in only months a substantial layer of dust has settled across them. Although really there isn’t anything “only” about months, she thinks; there has been nothing “only” about the months of living the life that hers has become. Aside from reminders like phone calls from Marcel or flowers from Zeke, she tries not to think too often about her old life; she rarely has the time. Her “old” life, she thinks sadly—but it isn’t her old life, she tells herself, it is her life, and what she is living now is simply an interruption, a hiatus, a parenthesis within the life she will return to.

She fans through the art-class brochures she picked up at the Met this morning, looking for something for Isabelle. If art is her daughter’s only form of communication, then by God Ruth is going to make sure she communicates. Of particular interest is a mother-daughter art class that meets Monday afternoons; if there’s room, Ruth thinks, they should start immediately, next week, even if they’ll be catching only the tail end of the series. And then after the holidays, when the new session starts, they’ll already know the ropes. She is no artist herself, but it pleases Ruth to think of something she can do with Isabelle, not to Isabelle—dragging her around from shrink to shrink. The idea makes Ruth feel a little less helpless.

She is about to lift the phone and call about this art class when it begins to ring, once, twice. She looks at the thing, annoyed, sighs, and answers.

The colon blinking between the hours and the minutes on the microwave clock begs to be counted, though Isabelle knows full well that in a minute, it will blink sixty times.

The corner of the newspaper flutters in the warm air from the vent. After checking on her stock, which to her pleasure has gone up, she had left the paper open, letting the strings of numbers and abbreviations hypnotize her eyes for a spell.

The kitchen’s fluorescent light flickers and hums in what Isabelle is sure must be some sort of pattern, but one she can’t quite discern.

Her sweater is pilled with raised wool that yearns for plucking.

Her fingers are rough with winter, the skin around her nails dry and easy to pull away in strips with her teeth, and when she pulls too far or a strip runs too deep she can make patterns with her blood on the paper towel she has set out on the table.