Suri glances at her watch. “Wow, so late? Yeshaya is a hard seven o’clock. I guess it’s your work schedule, huh? I’d just cry if I couldn’t see my kids all week.”

Rivi refuses to let Suri get to her today. “I see them plenty,” she says evenly. She usually has either an early morning and or a late evening with them, and she makes a point of catching each kid daily for at least a few minutes of quality time. “Shimmy’s usually allowed to read until eight thirty. He wanted to stay up with the big kids tonight instead of reading.”

“Fun mom!” Somehow, even that feels like criticism from Suri, but Rivi brushes it aside. Nothing will ruin today more than being provoked into an argument. Ezra looks pleased when Rivi doesn’t react, as though he really thinks that they’re getting along.

“I sure am,” Rivi says, and she rises to call down to Shimmy in the basement. Even just the movement from the couch is enough to jolt her into work mode, and she’s about to head upstairs when Eliana speaks up.

“I put together a Melaveh Malkah just for the adults,” she offers. “If you’d like to do a formal meal once the kids are all asleep.”

Ezra’s mother, ever the matriarch, says, “Of course we do,” and it’s settled. Rivi doesn’t dare go upstairs then.

She’s never really clicked with Ezra’s mother — Ma is too much like Atara and Suri, the women who speak a different language with their eyes and their tones, one that Rivi can barely grasp — and Rivi doesn’t need another reason to prove that she isn’t one of them.

And it’s nice, really, when an hour later, all of them are arrayed around the table together. The adults have been outnumbered by 20-plus children, and they haven’t had much time without shrieking and running and crying and little spats distracting them. It’s a pleasure to be surrounded by adults, even her sisters-in-law: Eliana, eager and buoyed by the success of her idea; Atara, always the consummate hostess who arranged the dining table into a classy setup; Suri, her critical eye on the place settings instead of on Rivi; and even Chaya, who has managed to escape bedtime with her brood of children to join them.

For the first time all weekend, they manage to have an uninterrupted conversation. Rivi barely participates, but she basks in the normalcy of it, words drifting past her ears as she twists spaghetti onto her fork.

“I just think it’s a waste of time,” Atara’s husband is saying about some father-son event. “The yeshivah must know that the boys are going for the food, not the learning. If they really wanted them to learn, they wouldn’t make the spread so insane.”

Suri snorts. “That’s why Avi goes,” she says. “I don’t think the fathers would bother without the sushi and the dried meats. He could just learn with the boys at home.”

Ezra, the only rebbi in the room, must feel obligated to chime in. “It’s not an either-or,” he points out. “They don’t have to choose between eating and learning. The food makes them enthusiastic about the Dor L’dor, and they wind up enthusiastic about the learning, too.”

“See, this is what’s so great about Rebbi Ezra.” Avi grins at him. “In his heart, he’s a fourth grader, too. He gets them.”

Ezra grins back, though it’s a little stilted, and Rivi feels a wash of sympathy for her husband. He isn’t the youngest man — Eliana’s husband taking that spot — but there is such a large gap between them that his older siblings still see him as the baby. He’ll never quite be their contemporary, even now that they’re all in their thirties. “He’s a born rebbi,” she interjects, and Ezra exhales beside her. “He treats every one of those boys like they’re his sons.”

“You hit the jackpot, Rivi,” Suri says from beside Avi. “Avi can barely manage dinnertime without me.”

“And baruch Hashem I never have to,” Avi says, raising his glass of soda. The other men laugh. Rivi feels a crawling discomfort; she yearns for her phone, a distraction to help ignore Suri’s needling.

She slips away from the table and hurries upstairs. In her room, the twins are fast asleep together on the mattress on the floor, Blimi’s thumb in her mouth and Shira with all of the blanket. Rivi’s phone is on the dresser in her room, still switched off, and she tiptoes into the room and retrieves it.

Unsurprisingly, she has dozens of emails and a few missed calls. A client, one of Meir’s friends, a coworker, the police department. The police department? Her heart quickens, and she listens to the voicemail, keeping the volume low so the twins won’t be disturbed. It’s a missive to call back, with no indication of what they’ve found.

The service here is mediocre, and Rivi has to step out onto the upstairs porch to make the call. It’s chilly, the snow coming down hard, and she wishes she’d grabbed her coat. “This is Rivi Greenberg,” she says when she finally reaches Detective Jimenez. “Do you have the results?”

His voice is guarded. “We’d like you and your brother to come into the station to discuss them.”

“That won’t be possible. I’m in New York for another day.”

“Monday, then. We can talk about it then.”

“No.” The anxiety rises in Rivi, the certainty that something is wrong. “You can tell me now, and then we can discuss it further on Monday.” She infuses her voice with lawyerly authority, rigid and no-nonsense.

It works. Detective Jimenez sighs. “Look,” he says. “It’s not what we expected. We tested and retested — used everything we could — but the DNA has been conclusive. The body in the grave is definitely your grandmother’s son.”

It’s what the men had speculated. “My father had a brother?”

“Not a brother.” Now Detective Jimenez sounds pained. “Your DNA and your brother’s both show that you are your father’s children. But there’s no match between your father and your grandmother. Was your father — had he given you any reason to believe that he was adopted? Without any records?”

“No.” Rivi doesn’t understand, can’t put these pieces together. None of this makes sense. “No, he couldn’t be. He was — he was an only child. There are pictures of my grandmother in the hospital with him when he was born.” She’s seen them buried in old storage, though Abba hadn’t liked her going through them.

“Are you sure that the baby in the picture was your father?”

“What are you getting at?” Rivi demands, baffled. “Do you think it was this brother?”

“Not a brother,” Detective Jimenez says again. “Mrs. Greenberg, the body in the grave is Avidgor Cohen. We’re not sure who your father was.”

The snow rushes past Rivi, fast and uncompromising, coating her freezing hands in white. Rivi is lightheaded, like she might topple over if she takes a step. She opens her mouth and words emerge, rote and mechanical, as though someone else is scripting them for her. “Gabe and I will come in on Monday.”

“Thank you. If there’s anyone else who knew your father, they might be helpful, too.” Detective Jimenez sounds relieved at her reaction. They set a time, then Rivi calmly shuts her phone off and goes back downstairs.

She sits down beside Ezra, who looks inquiringly at her cold-pinked fingers and the wet snow on her clothes. She shakes her head. Everything feels a little too fuzzy, too distant right now. It’s as though she’s seeing the people around her through frosted glass, just out of sight.

Of course, there’s only one woman here who can break right through any divider that Rivi has set up. “Aha! I knew Rivi couldn’t go more than an hour or two without sneaking in some work,” Suri says dramatically,

A few of the brothers laugh. “Well, that was the condition, wasn’t it?” Atara says, “Rivi gets to work and her family gets to play.”

“No pressure, Rivi,” Suri drawls, which is just… absurd. Suri pushed her to come, guilted her into it, and now she says no pressure? “We couldn’t have done this without you.” She tosses her sheitel, arrogant and confident.

Rivi hears herself saying tightly, “You mean you only needed me here to pay my share.”

Suri scoffs. “We don’t need your money,” she snaps. “We would have all paid a little more. Not a problem.”

Ezra, beside Rivi, moves as though to try to stop her from speaking. But it’s too late. The barrier comes crashing down, and Rivi is beneath it, flushed and unrestrained, the world falling out from beneath her as Detective Jimenez’s words finally begin to sink in. She’s so confused. She’s so angry. She just wants to hurt someone.

“Not a problem?” she echoes. “You couldn’t even pay your own share. We covered it. Like we’ve been covering all of your expenses for the past year.”

Thunderous silence fills the room. Suri opens her mouth as though she’s going to laugh, but first turns to look at her husband. The guilt on his face causes the laughter to die in her throat.

Atara looks scandalized. Ma’s face is hard. Ezra stares at his plate, jaw tight. “Rivi, how could you?” Eliana says softly.

Rivi can’t be there anymore, can’t sit in this room with these ordinary people and their mundane quibbles and judgment. Can’t watch the way that the room is about to erupt from the bomb that she’s dropped.

She bolts from the room, from the big house in the middle of nowhere, stalking out the door and breaking into a run.

The snow comes down fast and furious around her, and Rivi laughs, laughs, and laughs as she strides through it. Suri will never forgive her. Ezra’s family will be devastated. There was a man in Abba’s grave who had belonged there all along, and Rivi’s entire life is the invention of a dead man who has shared none of his secrets.

Her heel slips on the ice — will she never learn her lesson? — and she trips, toppling down the hill where the children had planned to sled tomorrow. She falls, still laughing like a madwoman, stumbling and sliding through the snow until she lands on her face in a snowbank. She lies on the ground, snow cascading down onto her as the laughter turns to tears, shaking sobs that leave her trembling on the ground.

And there she remains, a woman with no father. With no history. With no answers, no family, only a life that — from the start — has been an utter and complete lie.

To be continued…