Gritting her teeth, she wrote back, Thx for not asking! with a winking emoji. The phone number, please?

Tamar and Yaeli were fighting again. Dini’s nerves were already on edge trying to plan out her conversation with Adele Samson (tonight; Shuki had set her a deadline of tonight) and the bickering in the background wasn’t helping.

“Can you two please stop?” she called out from inside her office/guest room.

Too late, she realized her mistake. Her kids suddenly noticed that she’d slipped out of the afternoon fray to get some quiet work done.

“Mommy!” Five-year-old Yaeli’s head instantly appeared in her doorway. “Tamar took my taba’at! Tell her to give it back!”

Dini frowned. Go figure why a cheap shekel-store ring she’d gotten in gan should be her most prized possession.

Eight-year-old Tamar came dancing into the room, waving the ring. “It’s mine now! Yaeli traded it with me for three kallah stickers!”

Dini couldn’t help smiling at her Israeli daughters’ innocence. She loved how they referred to the Disney princess jewel stickers her mother had bought them in America as “kallahs.” And you wonder why I live here, Ma?

“I didn’t!” Yaeli cried. “She’s lying! Give it back!”

Dini closed her eyes. Of all the toys her children already owned and could buy more of, they were fighting over a shekel ring.

“Tamar, give it back. Yaeli loves that ring. She must not have understood what you meant.”

Tamar’s mouth dropped open furiously, and she was clearly swelling up for a master display of indignation, but Dini got distracted by a ping on her laptop’s WhatsApp.

Eliana?

Ignoring Tamar’s outrage, Dini clicked it open.