“Good morning, Golda,” Dovid asked as he stepped into the kitchen. “How’d you sleep?”

She smiled at him. “So good, Baruch Hashem, how ’bout you?”

He put his tallis bag on the counter — she bit her tongue — and yawned. “Mmm, not great. It was just too—”

“Quiet,” she filled in, laughing. “I was going to ask if you loved the silence as much as I do, but I guess we got our answer.”

He yawned again. “Put up a pot yet?”

He looked around for the coffee machine. With a flourish she pulled up the garage door.

“Ta da! Nope, let’s put one up now.”

She was having too much fun. She’d loved the past 40 years of her life, no mistake. It was an avodas halev and she’d thanked Hashem every day for allowing her to be on the giving end. But right now, she was ready to sit back and enjoy some nachas.

“Coffee, then I’ll tackle a box or two, and maybe later we’ll invite Estee and Yonah over for more coffee and some definitely not home-baked goods.”

She’d get there, eventually, but right now, there was no shame in asking Dovid to stop by that beautiful café, Cookie Corner, and pick up some cinnamon buns.

And he only needed to pick up six or so. No, “Oh, get a whole bunch, you never know who’ll be stopping by.”

Just one shanah rishonah couple, who definitely needed someone to check in on them.

Growing up was hard, she thought, but cinnamon buns could definitely sweeten the deal.

Was it a bad sign, Estee wondered, as she dabbed on some makeup, that her in-laws had only moved in yesterday and her mother-in-law was already calling to invite her over?

“Nah,” Tehila said, voice echoing over speakerphone. “She loves you, she wants to see you. Plus, last time you saw her, you were breaking out of a hospital room in the middle of the night.”

Estee snorted. “Yes, Tehila, and then I pulled the IV out of my arm in the elevator.”

Tehila cracked up. “Yeah right, Ms. I Faint if I See Blood.”

Avigail wasn’t sure. “I mean, it’s sweet that she invited you, but is this what your future is going to look like? Invites every other day?”

Estee opened her laptop. “Uch, I don’t know, I just don’t know. Speaking of futures, madame, what is happening with a certain Yehuda Sherman?”

Avigail’s giggle was all the confirmation she needed. She felt a faint smile tug her lips upward as she checked her email for any photography bookings (pleeeease Hashem). Avigail, her younger sister, was going to get engaged. That was huge. That was really, really huge.

Despite her weird, ominous conversations with Tehila and Avigail that probably left them scarred, she really was a very big proponent of marriage. She pushed her chair away from her desk and stretched. The thing was — and this was after a great deal of soul-searching — the difference between her and Ayala was that objectively she could appreciate that Yonah was a wonderful person. She genuinely admired him and looked up to him. It was just the whole “living with him and being his life’s partner” thing that sometimes made her remember her single days with a sad nostalgia.

A reminder went off on her phone. Yawning, she looked at her screen.

Call Rebbetzin Weiss. Do it!

“I,” she said aloud to nobody, “can be very bossy.”

IT was happening. The moment he’d been dreading — his father joining Kol Habanim — had finally arrived. Rabbi Wagschal had just called to say he’d love for Yonah to join a Motzaei Shabbos Pizza and Pool night, and he should definitely bring his father.

“Will do,” he said in a terrible hearty voice that he didn’t recognize. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“I’ll pass on the invite, thank you for reaching out.”

He knocked on Estee’s office and then poked his head in. “Est? Ready to head to my parents?”

Estee looked up at him, pouting. “Yup. No work to do here, so nothing keeping me. Let’s go.”

He bit his lip. This was absolutely not the time to share the words that were reverberating in his head, the ones that went, “Well, why on earth did you quit your steady job at the Bais Yaakov to go out on your own?”

Instead, ten points to him, he said, “Oy, don’t worry, you’ll get a booking soon, I’m sure.”

She looked down at the reminder blinking on her screen. It could wait. “Let’s go meet our new neighbors!”

They giggled at the corniness of it all and headed out into the evening.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1040)