She chooses her words carefully. “Gabe has… there was this time a couple of weeks ago when Gabe thought that there was someone in my father’s house with him. But he didn’t find anyone. Maybe it was connected to that.”

“To your father?” Ezra persists. “Why would… what exactly happened with your father’s body? Have you found out anything more about the person who was in the burial plot beforehand?”

Rivi wants to laugh — and also wants to sob. Have you found out anything more? Too much. Far too much.

“I didn’t want to be involved in that. I left it to Gabe,” she mutters.

“The ‘Gabe thing’ that has him getting shot at in Lenape Falls?” Ezra is too sharp, too quick to connect the dots, and Rivi clamps her jaw together and refuses to answer. Her secrets are rapidly unraveling, and Ezra is close to finding out everything, her carefully curated life crumbling in front of her.

Ezra casts her a sidelong glance. He doesn’t speak, but Rivi feels a flush of heat in her cheeks, as strong as the terror of the truth. But to her surprise, he says, “About what you were saying before Gabe called…”

I’m so tired of not being good enough for you! The line she said reverberates in her ears, and Rivi can’t respond.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra says quietly. “Not for… I’m not going to apologize for what I’ve said about your work. I meant that. I still mean it. But I’m sorry if I made you feel that way when it’s the last thing I’ve ever…” His voice trails off. “We’re here,” he says in a very different tone.

Rivi inhales slowly, waits until the car stops, looks out her window.

There they are: Gabe and Penina, standing there in Shabbos clothes in front of the station, still looking shell-shocked from the attack. And Rivi is suddenly gripped with such thunderous rage that it feels like she might burst into flames with the force of it.

At Gabe, who never knows when to stop, who has insisted on doing this stupid, awful digging and investigating, who has brought some unknown menace down upon them both. At Gabe, who only knows how to let go when she doesn’t want him to.

She throws the car door open and storms from the car, her slippers slapping against the sidewalk. “What were you thinking?” she demands.

Penina takes a tactful step away from them. Gabe blinks at her. “I was thinking that Main Street in Lenape Falls wasn’t going to be a prime hangout for assassins?”

Assassins. He might be joking, but the word sits hot in Rivi’s mind, surging with terror. Someone shot at them. Someone tried to kill Gabe and Penina. This wasn’t a coincidence. This was…

“They weren’t a great shot,” Penina says reassuringly. “Nothing came close to hitting us. It was terrifying, but we’re okay. The shooter vanished as soon as the cops showed up.”

“They went after you. After both of you.” Rivi’s head is spinning. “Did you know that you were in danger? Did you know that there was someone trying to kill you?”

Gabe hesitates, and it’s answer enough to send fire coursing under Rivi’s skin. “This is because of your digging. We almost lost you! This is because you don’t know when to stop! This is because of Gabe’s theories about Abba, about his true identity, about petty theft and criminals and—”

For a moment, they are 15 and 12 again, Rivi barking out rules and Gabe’s green eyes turning to stubborn emerald. “I won’t stop,” Gabe says, meeting her anger with cold determination, a barrier  she can’t crash through. “I have to do this. I need to know who Abba was.”

“Abba’s dead!” Ezra is here, is listening to every word with alacrity, but Rivi can’t censor herself, not when Gabe’s life hinges on what she has to say. “Abba is gone, and whatever he was — whatever he did — none of it matters anymore!”

“It matters to me!” Gabe’s voice rises, and he takes a breath, still calm in the face of Rivi’s fire. “I’ve spent my whole career trying to understand people. Because of how we were. Because of how Abba was. I could never understand him, you know?” He lowers his voice, eyes fixed on Rivi’s as though he’s forgotten about their audience.

“And maybe there’s something wrong with us now. With me,” he corrects, but Rivi hears it in his tone, knows what he means. With us. Brother and sister, both struggling to express emotions to compromise, searching, always searching, for ways to prove that they are different from their father.

“Maybe I’m just broken,” Gabe says quietly, and Rivi thinks, We. We are. “But I think… I think that if I can figure out Abba, I might finally get it. Why we never really fit in. Why we grew up the way that we did. Why we still can’t connect to anyone in… in the right ways.” Rivi can feel Ezra’s gaze, and she is fighting tears again, is struggling to breathe past hitched inhalations. “I won’t stop. Not until I understand it all.”

He waits, silent and challenging, unstoppable even in the face of a threat to his life.

To his life, and this isn’t Abba, dying of natural causes after a lifetime of taking poor care of himself. This is her baby brother, too young to lose, putting himself and her best friend at risk. She can’t conceive of losing him. She can’t dare to watch it unfold.

She’s left with only one choice, a hopeless one that goes against everything that she’s ever wanted. “Then I’ll help you,” she whispers.

Gabe jerks, startled. “What?”

“If this is… if this is what you need, then you won’t do it alone. Either of you,” she says hastily, turning to Penina. Penina raises her eyebrows, a ghost of a smile on her face. “I’ll help you,” she says again.

Beside her, Ezra opens his mouth, then closes it again. Gabe looks at her, and they are still 12 and 15, still a little kid and the big sister who’s meant to protect him — who needs him as much as he needs her. He’s been taller than her since he turned 14, practically towers over her when she’s in these ridiculous slippers, but he still looks so small.

She blinks away more tears. Then she exhales slowly, finds her footing again. “Do you… you already spoke to the police, right?”

Penina nods, speaking up for the first time since her initial reassurances. She sounds a little shaky, and Rivi seizes her wrist, wanting to feel it solid and tangible beneath her grasp.

“We, um… we gave our statements. They asked about your father. It sounds like they’ve decided that he was involved with the mob and this was some leftover gripe. We weren’t sure if we should tell them more about what we discovered.”

“What did you discover?” Ezra asks slowly. He’s looking between the three of them, bewilderment warring with trepidation.

And again there is no choice. “I’ll tell you. I’ll explain it all soon.” She feels defeated, like she’s failed at another thing she’s tried to accomplish. But the others look at her, waiting for instructions. Waiting for her to take charge, to lead this investigation, to be the one to make the decisions.

It’s what Rivi does. She’s a leader. “I think… while we don’t know exactly what Abba did, we’re still better off holding off trying to explain to the police what we’ve figured out.”

Penina nods. Gabe looks relieved. Ezra’s brow furrows. “For now, I think I should get you two back to Ezra’s car. Carefully,” she adds, and she shakes when she thinks about gunshots, about Gabe and Penina with targets on their backs. “We don’t know who’s after you. But we know that they’re desperate, and that makes them unpredictable.”

“Right,” Penina agrees. She looks wan as she climbs into the back of the minivan, and Rivi follows her in.

“So?” Rivi says, and she tries to keep her voice light, to ignore the tremor that runs through it. “Was it a good date?”

“It had its moments.” And suddenly, Penina and Gabe are both laughing, caught somewhere between terror and hysterics. Rivi forces a smile. Once they drop Gabe off at the car and Penina off at her apartment, Rivi lets the smile slide off her face.

“We have a lot to talk about,” Ezra murmurs from the front.

“Yes.” It’s all she can say, even once they pull into the driveway beside Gabe and everyone is safe inside. Gabe begs off to bed and Ezra retreats upstairs, and Rivi is left alone in the kitchen, staring at the clock as it ticks closer to midnight.

She can’t sleep. She’s too wired, too apprehensive about what comes next. Gabe is going to expect her to help uncover Abba’s secret past. Ezra is going to expect explanations. And nothing has been resolved, nothing has been settled, and she has no idea how to make it all okay.

There’s a knock at the door, and she jolts. Now? It’s late, much too late for visitors.

Her mind is filled with thoughts of policemen with questions, of a shadowy villain with a gun, of something mysterious and horrific that awaits. She nearly calls for Ezra to come downstairs before she stops herself. No. She can handle this. Carefully, she steals toward the door, and peers out the peephole at the porch.

It’s Suri, holding Rivi’s vase, tapping her foot impatiently as she waits. Seriously? She almost wants to laugh. After the night she’s had, the idea of a squabble with a sister-in-law feels refreshingly mundane.

Rivi pulls the door open. “Suri, it’s really late—”

“Well, you’re still up, aren’t you? Doing some important work, I’m sure.” Suri looks livid. “Rina just told me that you’re the one who left this at my house. I can’t believe that you’re still trying to buy me!”

The familiar irritation wells up again. “That’s not what I—”

“I don’t want your expensive vase or your expensive ring! I just want you to be decent!” Suri snaps, and she thrusts the vase into Rivi’s hands and storms back to her car in a remarkably impressive flounce.

Rivi blinks. What an end to a surreal, terrible night. Of course, Suri wouldn’t see the vase as an overture. Maybe if Rivi had mentioned that it was her favorite, a family heirloom…

Wait. I don’t want your expensive vase or your expensive ring!

What ring?

Rivi locks the door, brings the vase to the table, and inspects it. It’s just an ordinary vase, lovely as it always was. What had Suri meant?

She fiddles with the beautifully crafted stem, tracing it down the vase. There’s something there, a tiny catch at the bottom of the stem, and she pulls at it curiously, then pushes it upward.

The entire facade of ceramic flowers moves smoothly outward along a hairline crack at the  seam of the stem. It swings open like a door, revealing a second layer of smooth clay indented inward. And nestled in the indentation is a ring.

She knows the ring instantly. She’s seen it before, in photographs and newspaper articles, in a diagram sketched into a notebook she found on the same day as the vase. It’s a ring that captured Gabe’s attention for years. It’s a ring that horrified the world when it had disappeared.

It’s the ring alleged to be Mordechai’s, one of the three famous artifacts that went missing 30 years ago. One of the lost treasures. It slips from its spot in the vase to lie on Rivi’s dining room table, glinting in the light of the chandelier.

And it all suddenly makes a horrifying sort of sense, the secrets and lies and mysteries that surround Abba’s past.

Abba wasn’t just some petty thief or criminal.

He was something far, far worse.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 928)