Much as she’d want to insinuate herself into this life, it wasn’t hers to have. She calls a different woman “Mom”

“Don’t wanna eat my cholent.” Moishy pushes his plate away.

Aviva sits near him at the Shabbos table, in her familiar place, the same every time she comes. She knows this dining room in her dreams. But for all the years and all the times, she still sometimes feels like a guest when she’s here.

“Moishy, you need to eat something normal,” Kayla says.

The five-year-old pouts.

Kayla looks toward the head of the table for reinforcement.

Abba shrugs in a let-it-be motion. He’s sing-chanting zemiros — he was never much of a singer — and little Shira’s on his knee, warbling along.

Three-year-old bliss, Aviva thinks. It used to pull at her gut, seeing Abba with his kids. Now it’s a dull ache that never quite goes away.

At a lull in the singing, Aviva says, “She knows the tune better than me.”

Shira laughs. She would know it better, she’s been here every Shabbos of her life, while Aviva comes often enough, but lives another life.

“You gonna make me an ice cream cone?” Moishy asks from beside her.

“If your Mommy lets.”

She can’t seem to drop the pronoun. Once, she’d agonized over what to call the woman who’d come into Abba’s world, who’s nowhere near old enough to be her mother. It had quickly become just Kayla. Much as she’d want to insinuate herself into this life, it wasn’t hers to have. She calls a different woman “Mom.”