S ara Leah used to talk poetically about the smell of the ink the way the deep wet fragrance assaulted her when she entered Tatty’s print shop flooding her senses intoxicating her like wine.

Aidy opens the small door to the shop inhales then lets her breath out in a whoosh. To her it just smells overwhelmingly like ink.

“Aidy ” Tatty calls from behind the cutting machine. His voice is chapped and thin. “I’m glad you came.”

“My pleasure ” Aidy says automatically throwing her coat behind the counter. The setting sun glints through the frosted windows. It’s warm inside too warm and she has her own paperwork to complete but Wednesday has always been her day to help out in the shop. Not that there’s much helping to do these days but she hasn’t the heart to say so.

“No I’m glad you came because I need to talk to you.” Tatty looks up from feeding a stack of paper to the folding machine.

Aidy nods. Of course Sara Leah found the ink soothing. She would breeze in peck Tatty on the cheek hum a camp song fiddle with the colored papers; Tatty would smile back mellow. He never looked at her wearily and said he needs to talk.

“Look I’m not going to beat around the bush. We need to talk about you. About Yehuda. About you and Yehuda.” He looks her in the eye. Aidy feels herself go numb. “Yehuda is ready to remarry Aidy. He’s willing to go out with you.”

Heat rushes through her lungs. No. No no no please no—

Tatty spreads his hands, “Look, Aidy, you know Yehuda. He’s smart and kind and… and he was a wonderful husband, Sara Leah was so happy with him. And he’s a ben Torah, a real one. And there’s money, too. What more can you want?”

The presses roll, the silence whirs and clacks. Aidy tries to move, switch on the old computer, but her hands are ice. “What if... what if I don’t want,” she says flatly.

“Aidy.” Tatty’s voice is sharp. “You’re twenty-four. I’m trying, you know that, but we’re not exactly rich. And we haven’t gotten any exciting suggestions for you in a while now.”

His voice simmers with accusation. Aidy swallows and looks away, angry. She reaches for a stack of paper, smooths and flattens until all stray corners are perfectly aligned, the way her father taught her to. She knows her parents feel she’s ruining things for herself. “Smile, mammalah!” Mommy exhorts before dates. “You have to relax,” Her father advises. They think I scare boys away... I probably do. The boys she’s seen got banged up against her rough edges; it’s as if they had expected all girls to be soft and happy and charming, to be like Sara Leah. And that’s good. I can never marry anyone who expects me to be like Sara Leah.

Tatty presses down on the cutting machine; the blade slices through fat piles of paper, clean and beautiful. Aidy stares. She remembers standing on tiptoes as a little girl, mesmerized.

“Look,” Tatty says with a sigh, and when he looks up, she sees sorrow running deep in the lines of his face. “It’s been almost a year now. Yehuda wants to get married. He won’t wait around forever. I know... I know you don’t feel like marrying a widower. You want the fun and freshness... that thing.” He looks at his hands, at the ink stained into the crevices of his palms. “But you have to be mature. He’s an exceptional young man. And he’s interested in you.”

Aidy’s throat burns. Oh, her father, he thinks she won’t marry Yehuda just because he has been a husband. He doesn’t realize that she won’t marry him because he was her sister’s husband.

“Tatty,” She speaks. She keeps her voice smooth, though the rock in her throat hurts. “Tatty, I can’t marry him. Please don’t ask me to.”

“I’m not asking you to marry him!” Tatty’s hand slaps against the cutting machine. “But I am demanding that you go out with him!”

He turns away, sharply, nearly knocking over a glass plate of rubber stamps someone left lying around. Aidy brings the plates to the UV machine, her eyes lowered. She makes out shapes, letters, glinting through the glass. Overdue. Confidential. Denied.

At the door to the darkroom, her father turns, silhouetted by the waning amber of dusk against the dimness behind him. “Not everything in life is easy. But you have to make the right choices. Mommy already spoke to Mrs. Gruner. The date is set for this Wednesday.”

Aidy sucks in her breath. She feels crushed, flattened, ruined, as if her soul has been trampled. She opens her mouth, to say something, to protest, but her father has already disappeared into the dimness.

* * *

Yehuda is too thin and small for these chairs, Aidy thinks, half amused as her former brother-in-law tries to arrange himself on one gigantic sofa, all velvet cushions and lavishly carved gold.

Yehuda smiles easy and talks about nice, good things. His voice is buttery. Aidy toys with the stirrer, watches the bubbles fizz and pop in her soda. When Yehuda breaks, waits for her to reply, she says, “Look, this is weird. I–  I need to be open about this.”

Yehuda looks up but he doesn’t flinch.

“Let’s not pretend this is a regular date. There’s something between us, someone, a kind, wonderful someone, and”—Aidy pauses; sadness flares for a moment in his eyes, and she feels bad—“and there’s no need to pretend that it’s not so.”

“There. You said it.” His voice is light, but his eyes are kind. “If that makes you feel better.”

They sit in silence, listening to the chink and rumble of glassware and low voices, heels clicking on polished floors. Finally, Yehuda shrugs, smiling again. “So? Now that we cleared that, can we, um… have a regular date?”

Aidy laughs. “You win.”

Two guards in uniform stroll past. Aidy sees their eyes, flicking toward them, then away, as if the couple sipping drinks on the sofas is too normal, or average, to warrant a longer glance. It makes her feel pleased and sick at the same time.

“...so there we were, all decked out in prison regalia, the game not beginning yet, so one guy says, ‘Let’s go to Walmart.’ ” Yehuda folds his arms, and he looks young, suddenly, carefree. “We made a rather somber procession, Muller leading us inside, in handcuffs. Jacobs asked the first customer service guy he met, where we can find the bolt cutters.”

Aidy smirks. She thinks, briefly, of a slight, fair girl in colorful polos, screaming and cheering, arms around her shoulders. The audience hushed in the darkness of the basketball court, her cheeks flushed, eyes dancing when the spotlight spills over her face. The one summer Aidy had gone to camp, Sara Leah had tried to get her into things, to “have a blast!” as she’d enthusiastically promised her she would all winter long. “I hated camp. It wasn’t my speed.”

“Really?” Yehuda looks at her, eyes bright with interest, and she feels bad for him.

He’s thinking the sister would be as sweet and uncomplicated as the wife. She shrugs. “All that noise, and people with their fingers in my things. Cheering absurdly all day long. I like quiet and private and decent, things like that.” She stops. “Not that it’s wrong to feel differently,” she adds quickly.

Yehuda talks, and with some apprehension, Aidy notes that he really is engaging. But she keeps her shoulders stiff. She knows the lines that frighten the guys, the speculations that make them look up, take a step back. She’s learned to stifle some of them by now, those thoughts and feelings boys seem not to want to hear. She lets it all out tonight and it’s fun. No sweet talk for this guy, no use having him wonder and pontificate if maybe she really could be his second Sara Leah.

“You didn’t tell me anything about seminary. That’s only the first thing my sisters talk about.”

Aidy shrugs. “I only went to seminary because I want to get married.” She waits for him to blink, clear his throat.

He grins. “Ah, okay. That works.”

A bang, voices behind them. They turn to see a group of what clearly looks like Jewish kids, all long hair and loud voices. Yehuda frowns. “It’s sad,” he says, turning back to Aidy. “These kids do a few things wrong, they’re kicked out of school, and the game is over for them.”

Aidy nods. “I was nearly kicked out in tenth grade.”

Yehuda startles.

“Two of my classmates got into a big mess. One got kicked out. The other — her father’s a rich guy, gives a lot of money to the school — she got away with a rap on her knuckles. Barely.” Her eyes flash. “We were stunned, but nobody said a word. So I went up to my principal the next day and I told her — it’s ugly.” Aidy stops, feels the old anger rattle behind her ribs. She shakes her head. “I was suspended for a month.”

It’s late when he drops her off. She stands and studies their tiny stucco, peeling white shingles, grass matted and burned from the cold. She is fairly certain she’s done a good job disabusing him of any notions he may have had. She stares up at the sky, deep and endless and black, swathed in layers of velvet clouds. He and Sara Leah had spent the eight and a half months of their sad, rosy marriage, tucked away in Yerushalayim, so he didn’t know, hadn’t known, that sisters can have differences as vast and unconquerable as the night sky.

She closes her eyes, sees an image of herself in the Marriott, talking, no censoring or cross-outs or cogitating. For a fleeting moment, she feels light.

Wind moans through the trees and she sighs, pulls at her scarf, and heads for the door.

* * *