__________________

In the evening, the rabbi claimed some other engagement—to which, needless to say, it wouldn’t be appropriate to take Jonah—and asked if he might “impose on the family to look after the young man” for a few hours.

“What am I supposed to do with him?” Angela asked in sincere bewilderment. She knew that the rabbi wasn’t going anywhere but home, that he had no other engagement and no purpose but to give Jonah more time with her. “I don’t even have the kind of food he eats.”

* * *

This—how unconnected and unwanted he was, more so than even Raphael’s Son in his own day because he, at least, had Raphael’s Wife to love him—confounded Angela.

All her life, Angela had heard of and met people who had not one other person in the world they knew cared for them. At work, she had come across hundreds of stories of children who died of abuse or neglect because no one stepped in to help, of old men and women who suffocated from heat or froze on the sidewalk because no one looked in on them.

Still, she was struck by the utter unconnectedness, the absolute aloneness of this child. You could say Rappin’ Rabbi cared about Jonah, that he cared more than he was paid to, and that was true. He had been a part of Jonah’s life longer than anyone else, served far beyond the call of duty, but even he knew that the affection he could give the boy was not enough. He—the rabbi with no congregation—understood the difference between having one person to see to your needs, and having a family, a community, to recognize you as their own.

Angela understood it too. No matter how often the Pearl Cannon had targeted the home team or how many gripes Angela had registered about the complexities of maintaining a “tribal mentality” in twenty-first-century Los Angeles, there was always this: where she came from, the people had each other. That was worth something. Maybe it was worth all the difficulties it caused. Maybe that’s why Angela had stuck with the tribe instead of severing all ties.

* * *

They were still sitting at the table, though Jonah had long since given up on the organic, sprouted grain wheat bread and organic, unsalted almond butter sandwich Angela had made for him. She kept the stuff in her fridge because it was a healthy LA alternative to white toast and sweetened, packed-with-hydrogenated-oil peanut butter that normal people lived on everywhere else in America, but she couldn’t be caught dead eating any of it herself. The almond butter tasted like sludge and the sprouted grain bread couldn’t be forced down a normal throat no matter how much coffee she tried to chase it with. She also kept unsweetened almond and coconut milk instead of the regular stuff because in LA, dairy products were known carcinogens, right after cigarettes and sugar. So she bought the “make-believe milk” once a month at Trader Joe’s, tossed it out, unopened, after a month, and went to her espresso hangout where she insisted on regular milk in her latte and chocolate chip muffins for breakfast, lunch, and afternoon tea.

“Do you like In-N-Out?” she asked Jonah.

He shook his head. He was back to hugging the blue pillow, and he seemed even smaller, thinner, than he had the day before.

It occurred to her that he must be terrified of being there, alone with a strange woman, his only friend—the rabbi—having taken off with promises of “checking in” later that night. But it was one thing to feel sorry for a lonely, abandoned child, something entirely different to suddenly be the one designated to save him.

Because that’s what she had become, she realized all too well, the minute she agreed to see Jonah. That’s why Leon had asked her to “see him for yourself.” With Elizabeth gone, Angela was the only surviving member of the Soleyman family—or so she had believed, until Jonah came along. Now, it was the two of them.

She could either release Jonah back into the ocean to be swallowed by whales, or she could bring him home.