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At eleven o’clock, the rabbi and Jonah came back from their Egg McMuffin breakfast. As if invited to stay the day, the rabbi cleared the coffee table and took out a deck of cards from his pocket.

“He counts like the devil,” he said of Jonah. “Wanna play blackjack with us?”

It was a good thing this rabbi was so handsome, Angela thought, or his presumptuousness would have been intolerable.

“I never learned anything more complicated than Go Fish,” she said sincerely, and this made Jonah laugh for the first time since she had seen him.

She didn’t ask them to leave because she wasn’t sure she wanted that. And she didn’t ask the rabbi what he wanted from her because she thought she knew the answer.

Clearly, the rabbi hoped that the child-support payments, diverted by Eddy Arax and diminished too, would continue even after Raphael’s Son’s death. That’s why he had brought Jonah for her to meet—so she could serve as a liaison with Neda, convince her to do the right thing by giving up the $1,000 each month. They were always asking for money, these religious types, no matter how poor or wealthy the charity.

“I don’t have any influence with the father’s widow,” she said when Jonah went into the bathroom to wash his hands before dealing the cards. She meant Neda.

“I can ask the woman who runs my mother’s foundation,” she offered. “But I’ll tell you right now you’ll have better luck asking her yourself because the stupid bitch hates me.”

She got up to find a piece of paper on which to write Stephanie Dalal’s contact information. The rabbi raised a hand.

“No need for that,” he said, and smiled at Jonah who had appeared back in the room. “We haven’t come to ask for money.”

Angela glared at him for making that last remark in front of the boy. It meant she couldn’t challenge or dispute the claim without hurting Jonah. “I just wanted you two to meet.”

She announced she was going to take a nap and went into her bedroom, closed the door, and lay on the bed fully dressed. After a minute she got up again and locked the door because she realized the rabbi was just por-roo—one who isn’t ashamed to keep asking for more—enough to walk in even as she slept.

* * *

She was turning the lock and telling herself this was crazy—she had to shut herself inside her own house just to get five minutes’ worth of privacy, and even then she had the feeling that Jonah and the rabbi were everywhere, on this side of the door as much as the other.

My father is waiting for me on this side of midnight.

Where had she heard those words?

It’s what Izikiel had written the day he predicted his own death. Later, he had come back for Raphael.

“I got to bury Aaron because they weren’t waiting for him on the other side,” Elizabeth had explained to Angela years later. Jay Gatsby had preempted Aaron’s ancestors, killed him too soon, and, because there was no one to claim him, sent his body to rot in the rainstorm of Elizabeth’s grief.

That’s when it hit Angela: What if whoever had killed Raphael’s Son knew that his body would disappear as soon as he died? What if he had driven up to the gate, seen a familiar face—someone with whom he felt safe enough to roll down his window even if they came out of the dark in the middle of the night? He didn’t put the car in park, just set his foot on the brake and turned his face to the person in the driveway.

He saw the knife and panicked, pressed on the gas pedal to get away, only the car was still in drive so it crashed into the gate and stopped. Then Raphael’s Son sat there, bleeding out until his father reached for him.

“Ohhh myyy God,” Angela sighed as she slunk to the floor.

Only two people—Eddy Arax and Neda—knew that Jonah had the incandescence disease.