FOUR

I know the way to Onkl Jacob’s shop, Aaron.” With a touch more force than necessary, Rivka tightened the carrying strap around her copies of McGuffey’s Third and Fourth Readers. “I am perfectly capable of walking there on my own.”

She might as well not have spoken. Arm’s length from her in the small front parlor, cool disapproval clear on his face, her brother nodded toward the books. “If you’re ready, we should go.”

Rivka drew breath for an angry retort, then pressed her lips shut. What could she say that Aaron would hear? It was only a dance. It was only one night. I only wanted…

Heat rose in her cheeks as she picked up the books and stepped out the front door into the too-bright afternoon sunshine. She had wanted exactly what she got. She had wanted Hanley to take her hand, hold her, look at her like she was the most important person in his world just then. She had wanted to be with him in that world, instead of in her own where he didn’t belong. Just for a few hours. Stolen time for a daydream, with no one to know of it but her. And him.

How foolish she’d been to think that could happen. How foolish she was still.

Distant bells chimed the three-quarter hour as she and Aaron walked without speaking down Market Street. They passed two women out doing the day’s shopping. One gave Rivka a nod. The other averted her gaze. Aaron pretended not to notice, but his strides lengthened, and he was soon ahead of Rivka. It hurt, watching him and knowing the reason. Because his wife is a goyische mulatto, and some of our own can’t accept that.

The day’s heat made the air heavy, the baked-wood smell of the boardwalk mingling with the pungent odor of horse manure from passing traffic. Sweat ran down Rivka’s back, and her scalp itched beneath her kerchief. She gritted her teeth and did her best to ignore the discomfort. The walk to the tailor shop wasn’t long, and at least in the back room she and her students would be out of the sun. Five girls now, down from ten, as Aaron’s supposed disgrace touched Rivka, too. Well, she would devote herself all the more to those who were left.

Light glinting off the shop’s front window made her squint as they drew nearer. No sign of Moishe Zalman, Onkl Jacob’s assistant, who polished the glass every day. He must be inside, working on a suit or a shirt. As if he’d read her mind, Aaron laid a hand on her sleeve. “Be polite to Moishe. All right?”

She sidestepped out of reach. “I am always polite to Moishe.” Apart from Onkl Jacob and Tanta Hannah, Moishe was one of the few people who didn’t go out of his way to avoid them. Rivka knew she should be grateful, but the reason for it made her anxious. Especially now.

“You barely speak to him when you arrive.”

“He’s working. I have work to do as well.” A sliver of guilt broke through her irritation. She did avoid speaking to Moishe beyond the most perfunctory greeting, fearful that anything more would prompt him to tell her things she didn’t want to hear. I have spoken to Reb Nathan about us, for example. Or—now that Aaron had fully recovered from the beating he’d suffered a few months earlier—I will speak to your brother. With Papa dead since January, it was Aaron and Jacob’s place to decide Rivka’s future. That was how things were. Why did it make her want to fight, or run somewhere far away? Her breath came fast, and she steeled herself as she walked around to the rear entrance. The girls still permitted to come would be arriving soon.

Aaron normally left her at the door to her classroom, a onetime storage room for extra cloth that Onkl Jacob had emptied and allowed her to use. Today, he came in with her. Surprised, and fearful of what this might mean, she snapped at him. “I don’t have Detective Hanley hidden in a corner. You don’t need to check.”

“Rivka.” He kept his voice low, so as not to carry into the shop, but there was no mistaking his scolding tone. “This is exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing. Because you have not acted with good sense, I can’t trust you to behave yourself as you should, and Detective Hanley is—”

“He saved my life. And yours.”

“He endangered you! If you hadn’t tried to help him—” Abruptly, Aaron turned away from her. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is your future, and it doesn’t lie with an Irish policeman.”

She closed her eyes and counted silently to five. “It was one night,” she said when she could trust her voice. “Two hours. A dance.”

“A kiss,” he said, his voice as hard as his look.

She flushed. “Yes. One. For a moment, just one moment of…” What could she call it…madness? No…but she couldn’t name it yet, even to herself. “Whatever you may think—”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. It does matter that no one else thinks it.”

Especially Moishe, he might have said, but mercifully didn’t. The question, Do you? rose to her lips, but before she could say it, he brushed past her toward the curtained doorway into the shop. “Where are you going?” she asked instead, as if her words could forestall him.

He glanced toward her, his expression softening. “It’s high time to settle things. You know it, Rivkaleh.”

The endearment only made her angrier. “So you are taking Papa’s place now, deciding my life for me? You haven’t even been home half a year, you have no right—”

“I have every right. And every responsibility.” He spoke gently as he moved closer to her. “I haven’t been much of a brother to you for a long time. I’m sorry for that. I know how alone you’ve been, how much you’ve had to depend on yourself since Papa died. Too much. But there’s no need anymore. I promise.”

“But I don’t want—”

He brushed her cheek with a fingertip as if shushing a small child, pushed back the curtain, and stepped through the opening. She stared after him as he walked over to Moishe, who was cutting fabric at a slanted table. Moishe glanced up and set down his shears. Within seconds, Jacob came over and joined the conversation.

She yanked the curtain shut, then turned away and pressed her hands flat against the long table where her students sat. The surface felt hard and unyielding. She stared a moment at her fingers, splayed like pale fans against the dark wood. Unbidden, a memory came of her hands clasped in Hanley’s as he whirled her through the Irish reel, both of them laughing, so close to each other she could feel his warmth. She hadn’t seen him since the ceilidh dance. Because Aaron kept him away, or because he’d lost interest? Maybe he had. Without seeing him, reading his feelings in his face, she couldn’t know.

Enough. She fumbled at the book strap and began laying out the readers. The girls would arrive any second. Think of today’s lesson. Then home for chores and supper. And after that…

She blew out a breath, feeling weighed down in the hot back room. She had no answer for after that. Maybe she never would.