Bracha cleared her throat. “Ayala asked me to call you. She needs to cancel your meeting this morning”

Surprise him, Shuki’s mother had told her in yesterday’s message. As Dini prepared to head out to RBS for her weekly meeting with Ayala, she was still wondering what exactly her mother-in-law meant by that. Surprise a grown man about where he’ll be spending his Shabbos? The thought rankled. Kind of like sending a WhatsApp to your daughter-in-law to inform her about her own Shabbos plans.

And yet, she hadn’t breathed a word to Shuki last night. Not even when he came home and growled at Chaviva for blasting her music too loud. Chaviva had stared at him in shock, and so had Dini, even though she herself had told Chaviva to turn down the volume just five minutes earlier. It was just so unlike Shuki — both the snappiness and being irritated by loud music — that she’d been tempted then and there to tell him about his mother’s Shabbos arrangement and demand an explanation. Why does she think you need a vacation? What’s going on at work?

But she’d pressed her lips together and kept quiet. She supposed being a dutiful daughter just came too automatically.

Her purse was already in her hand when her phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize.

“Hello?” she said as she headed out the door.

“Dini? It’s Bracha Resnick speaking.”

Bracha Resnick? She squinted into the air. Oh! Bracha.

“Hi,” she said, trying not to show her surprise, or to think about how she’d stalked away the last time they’d spoken to each other, on a sidewalk in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

Bracha cleared her throat. “Ayala asked me to call you. She needs to cancel your meeting this morning. She was up all night dealing with her mother and the doctors, and she’s sleeping now.”

Whaaat? Dini slammed the door a bit too loudly as she walked back inside her house. She took a deep breath, and then another, before answering.

“I didn’t realize Chesed Tzirel hired a secretary now, too.”