“Rivi asked me to come. She wants this done as quickly as possible”

“D

aniel! This way!” Rivi’s seven-year-old, Shimmy, waves him to the stairs. “There’s Lego down here!” Daniel takes off to join the other kids. Penina is left standing in the doorway, squinting around in the darkness of Rivi’s childhood home.

It’s strange to be here and hear the cacophony of children playing downstairs. Penina remembers the house as large and dim. There had always been a sense of isolation, as though the Cohens were the only people in the middle of nowhere instead of living on a street with a dozen houses. Rivi had warned her that it would be unpleasant in the house, but she hadn’t found it unpleasant at all. Just quiet and sad, like Rivi’s father.

The house is in Avigdor Cohen’s name, which Penina had discovered in her research this week, an inheritance from once-wealthy parents. It’s bigger than three people had needed, and certainly just one. And it shows. The dining room is dusty and untouched,   except for a few stacks of papers that Gabe must have left there recently. The living room has faded couches from another era, and the kitchen has been mostly untouched.

Ahuva Pretter, Hillel’s wife, is in there, putting silverware into a box, and she smiles at Penina, brown eyes warm and friendly. “Gabe roped you into this, too, huh? Hillel sold this to me as a Sunday activity for the kids.”

“Sounds like they’re having fun,” Penina says, jerking her head at the basement. “Rivi asked me to come. She wants this done as quickly as possible.”

“All hands on deck!” Ahuva says cheerfully. “The men are all working on the basement — there are some old appliances there that Hillel’s going to try to bring home to take apart, if I’m not careful. I think Rivi is working on the study.”

“Perfect.” Penina planned to find a reason to get into the study, anyway. If she’s going to find out as much as she can about Rivi and Gabe’s father, there’s no better place.