From "Metronome"

“Jin?”
He turned to find Mrs. Carter standing on the landing. She sighed, and walked over to join him at the piano. Over his shoulder, she looked at the music he held in his hands.
“It’s incredible,” she says. “Just jibberish to me. And you can turn that into music.”
“He doesn’t feel like coming down, does he?”
She sat down in the fold-out chair beside him. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a minute, and Jin felt permeated by the tiredness rolling off the slight slope of her shoulders, her limp hair, sticking slightly to her neck.
She pulled her hands into her lap and intertwined her fingers. “He says he wants to quit,” she said.
“He’s angry,” said Jin, grasping the sheet music.
“He’s angry.” She looked down at the carpet. “But he’s also sad. It’s a lot for a boy, I think. His school. You have to do so many things well. And there’s some stuff going on with his Dad.”
Jin’s pulse quickened at the mention of the man he’d never met.
“So I think we should just give him a little time off.”
Jin’s throat clenched. Time off was time lost. They had not yet reached the point where Jake could not live without the piano. And they had to reach that point, less he become another gifted student who limits the display of his talent to saccharine, forced performances at birthday parties, or Christmas.
“He’s been making so much progress, though. Jake has a gift.”
Mrs. Carter smiled warmly at the mention of her name. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? Watching my own son do something I could never dream of? I love to stay upstairs while you have your lessons and listen to him play. But he’ll be off to college next year. And I can’t force him.”
Why not? Jin thought. Why? With a gift like his, it was a wonder the neighbors didn’t come barreling through the front door with shouting at the infidel to come down and perform.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on right now, and I just feel like he deserves to concentrate on his friends, his sports, the things that make him happy. You’re only young once, right?”
“But he loves to play the piano.” Jin said, desperate.
“Does he?” She asked, her brown eyes lighting up. “He won’t talk about it with me.”
“Please,” Jin whispered. “You shouldn’t let him quit,”
Mrs. Carter broke into a wider smile and leaned forward to clasp his hand. “Oh Jin,” she said, “don’t take it personally. I’ll recommend you to all my friends.”
Jin pushed the piano bench backwards and got to his feet. He gritted his teeth together to keep his eyes from welling up, and forced his lips to curl upwards into a delusional smile when Mrs. Carter gathered his bag of music off the floor.
“He might change his mind,” she said, passing it to him. “Fingers crossed!” She held up two crossed fingers, to empathize her point.
Jin did not feel like standing in her living room and staring at her crude attempt to make him smile. Jin felt like running up the stairs and yanking Jake out of his bedroom and forcing him to come downstairs to that piano, because if you didn’t go to it in the worst of times, you might never go to it again. Jin did not do this. Jin laughed at her crossed fingers. Jin accepted her offer to pay him for the remaining month’s lessons, and then he let himself out of their home into the perfect light of summer’s end.