Yehuda sat down slowly, his jaw tense. “This girl doesn’t have her own room to sleep in? Why is she coming here at two in the morning?”

Tammy sat at the kitchen table staring at her empty mug, trying to muster up the energy to go make herself a coffee. She heard Shimmy starting to whimper from his crib.

The front door opened. Yehuda was home from shul.

“Tammy?” He walked toward her. “Are you okay?”

She made an effort to open her burning eyes. “Yeah. Just tired.”

“Oh,” he said uncertainly. “Uh, Shimmy’s awake. Should I bring him to you?”

“Mm-hm,” she mumbled.

He was already heading to Shimmy’s room when awareness suddenly returned to her hazy brain. “No! Yehuda! Don’t go in!”

Yehuda paused, staring at her. “Why not?”

“Because Shani’s sleeping in there.” Tammy grimaced apologetically. “She called me after I got back last night and asked if she could sleep here. It was two in the morning, so I couldn’t tell you about it then.”

Yehuda sat down slowly, his jaw tense. “This girl doesn’t have her own room to sleep in? Why is she coming here at two in the morning?”

Tammy sighed and rubbed her forehead. She could feel the beginnings of a headache. “She was… I don’t want to go into details, but she was in a bad place emotionally. She needed to be someplace safe.”

Yehuda’s eyes narrowed. “Are you her mother? Or her therapist?”

Tammy blinked, taken aback by the edge in his voice. “Well, no, but who’s she supposed to turn to? She doesn’t have a therapist, and her mother is precisely the problem.”

“Maybe she should think about getting a therapist, then,” he said, his face still rigid as he stood up.

“Come on, a therapist wouldn’t let her come over in the middle of the night. That’s my job, to be there for these girls like a surrogate mother. That’s what I signed up for.”

“Well, it’s not what I signed up for,” Yehuda muttered.