His mother and father came over to the bench, with Nadia straggling behind them. “We’re going to the catering hall, to let the guests know. We’ll have to stand up there and tell the guests,” said Arieh, crumpling his Chicago Bulls cap in his hands. “We’re all going,” echoed Nadia behind him. “We’re all going to tell them. We’ll all stand there.”

Her face was gathered in now, tucked in toward a center, an estimated longitude, which ran from the middle of her forehead to her chin and projected a cool resolution to annihilate any trace of self-pity. Her blond quiff fluttered above all that like a flag erected on a hilltop by the victor.

Matti scanned the empty lot around him. “Where’s Adnan?” he suddenly thought to ask. “They took him in for questioning at the police,” said Peninit. “They’ll let him go, for sure. They have nothing on him, nothing, why wouldn’t they let him go?”

Matti looked at his mother and sensed his regular, anticipatory anger giving way to a sort of compassion. His heart suddenly ached for her neck folds, which quivered and dripped with sweat, for her robbed, lost gaze and that unraveling of her expression, which made him think of a house after a burglary. “But he did us a favor,” he said gently. She shrugged her shoulders, holding Arieh’s hand. “Whatever you think. We’re going,” she said, but she did not move, remorseful for a moment. Then she turned to Nadia: “You don’t have to come with us, really. Stay here, get some rest.”

“Yes, yes,” Ilan quickly concurred. He wiped Nadia’s forehead with the turquoise sash that had been wrapped around his head. “You shouldn’t go there. We’ll tell the people everything.”

“What everything?” Nadia panicked. “What ‘everything’? Don’t you dare tell them everything.”

“That’s a good idea, actually, for Ilan to come with us instead of you,” Peninit intervened. “He’ll come with us to the catering hall as the family representative and you take a pill and go get some sleep.”

“Okay,” Nadia acquiesced, though a look of doubt spread over her face. The words “family representative” kept working inside her, excreting sour juices of displeasure and disagreement. She also suspected that Peninit’s goodwill was meant solely to soften her up before the inevitable blow: her obligation to help cover the deposit paid to the event hall.

Ilan cut off her labyrinth of contemplations. “I’m putting something on, I’ll be right down,” he declared, and sprinted toward the building.

Arieh glanced at his watch. “Almost six,” he announced gloomily. Arieh, Peninit, Nadia, and Matti sat down next to one another on the bench next to Gramsy, resembling a row of passengers on the back seat of a bus, waiting for Ilan. Waiting again. Except that now their expectation had a different flavor, chalky and bitter. (Matti stood up and moved to the curb, having almost been pushed off the crowded bench.) The black-and-white stray cat lay on the sidewalk, glaring at them gravely and somewhat curiously.