And I shouldn’t have.” Her daughter Zoe looked up at her. Aisha took a breath. “I thought I was making a harmless comment.”
“I wasn’t.” Tom shifted his weight. “Nobody was trying to be mean.” Sarah’s eyes moved to him.
“That’s usually what people say after they’ve been mean.” The veteran near the ticket machines coughed into his fist to hide a smile. Tom flushed. “Look, I just meant he’s a kid.”
“So is your son,” Sarah said. “You going to teach him to laugh whenever another kid takes something seriously?” Mason stared at the floor. Tom’s face changed then, not because Sarah had insulted him but because she had redirected the scene toward the person who mattered most to him.
He looked at Mason and seemed, for the first time, to wonder what his son had absorbed from the exchange. “No,” he said after a moment. “I guess not.” Melissa exhaled.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Eli. The apology sounded awkward because public apologies often do. “I really did think I was joking.” Eli shrugged one shoulder.
“Okay.” Sarah knew that shrug. It meant he did not want to carry the adults’ discomfort for them. Their train delay had become forty minutes by then, and the crowd began breaking apart once the emotional event appeared finished.
People returned to luggage and coffee. The college students walked away reviewing a video one of them had recorded. The veteran shook Eli’s hand and told him to keep playing. The security officer resumed his patrol after quietly telling Sarah that the piano was public and her son had every right to use it whenever it was available.