Henny had never felt lucky, just that she’d exchanged one kind of unlucky for another

Shuey was home for supper and Malka wanted to play Bananagrams after the meal to celebrate. Shuey didn’t mind, but he really wanted to schmooze with Henny alone. There was so much he wanted to tell her.

Henny looked at him meaningfully when Malka asked about playing for the second time and he caught the cue. “Sure Malks,” he said cheerfully as he could, “that sounds like a good idea, let’s clear up here and we’ll play.”

Being an absentee father meant that Henny was suddenly in charge of all chinuch decisions and he just had to roll with it. You didn’t get to be away from home four nights a week and still give opinions.

Henny was relishing the role, furtively texting him that she had such a hard week in school, she needs this, to just chill. Then she picked up her phone again and added, with her father.

Henny and Malka employed a similar Bananagrams strategy, dumping their difficult letters right away, even if it meant forming two-letters words. Shuey liked to push that off and go for the glorious, several-letter words, with the easy letters — easels and astride — while Malka was slamming down the difficult pieces on her “quay”s and “axe”s. After a few minutes, Shuey was left with only the difficult letters.

Malka went with “id,” and he protested. “There’s no such word, it’s just short for identification, take it back,” Shuey said triumphantly.

Malka met his gaze. “No Ta, I don’t mean I.D., I mean ‘id’, it’s a psychoanalyst term for part of the mind.”

Now Henny gave him the pointed look again, as if he were actually being psychoanalyzed at that moment.

He smiled brightly. “Malk, you’re something else.”

He reached for his phone and texted Henny. I hope I passed your little psychiatric test, you can stop staring at me that way I didn’t forget how to be a father in three days Baruch Hashem. Lol.

The “lol” was to take the edge off of what he was saying. He didn’t like the way this was going. He was away more than he was home, but he’d always been attuned to his children and that hadn’t changed.

It was quiet, and then Malka proudly dropped down her last four pieces, completing the word “icing.” She clapped for herself. “Nice game. Now you guys can go back to texting each other.”

She stood up and bowed. Henny looked at Shuey as if this was somehow his fault.