Rivi considers the picture that Boyd is painting, the underpinnings that he doesn’t notice he’s sharing. Yachts. Vacations. Country clubs. Places with extensive staff, people to parent the boys while Boyd focused on other things. “Did they speak to you about expanding their role in the company before they left?”

“They never spoke to me about anything.” Boyd laughs bitterly. Rivi’s desk phone rings, but she ignores it. Her secretary can wait. “Your sons are young, Riva. You don’t know what it’s like when children reach adulthood. They’re so determined to be independent successes that they would deny that they ever leaned on their parents. They abandon their father without a moment’s thought.”

“I see.” Rivi nods, schooling her face into an expression of sympathy. It’s impossible not to think of Abba, to imagine him as the bitter and lonely man in front of her. Had he resented Rivi for putting distance between them? Abba wasn’t prone to bitterness in his isolation, but the end of his life, the years alone while his daughter lived 20 minutes away… that must have burned.

But he was a different sort of father from Boyd. Boyd had provided in excess, even if he’d rarely been present. Abba was always around, lingering in the shadows, lost in the quiet sadness of his memories. Ima’s loss hit him hard, and Rivi had been so angry with him for it. We’re still here, she had wanted to scream sometimes, sitting at a Shabbos table with a silent father and her solemn brother. Don’t we matter?

“If it were just that they thought I was too old to run the company, it would be different. They’d be wrong, but at least then it would be about our legacy.” Boyd thumps his cane against the floor. “But a new business? With my clients? They don’t deserve a penny that I spent on them.”

“If I take on the suit — and I’m not sure that I will,” Rivi adds quickly, conscious of Ezra’s apprehension. He’s more cautious than her when it comes to her job, more reluctant to stretch them too thin. She wishes that he’d trust her to rise to this challenge. Hasn’t she always managed before? “If I do, I’d aim to settle with your sons before the case went to court. The wrong judge might agree to a jury, and I don’t think we’d do well with one.” The wealthy absentee father is such a cliché that the jury would almost certainly sympathize with the sons.

“Oh, this will go to trial. I want it public. I want an injunction keeping them from ever working again. I want them to lose every shred of legitimacy that they have in the auction world.” Boyd leans forward, cane in both hands, the contempt in his voice as sharp as the anger. “I want them—”

There’s a knock at the open door, cutting them off, and Ezra’s mother pokes her head in. “Hope I’m not interrupting,” she says, peering around. “My, this is quite an office.”

Rivi blinks. Blinks again. No, she isn’t imagining her mother-in-law standing in her doorway, Rivi’s secretary hovering apologetically behind her. I tried to tell you, she mouths.

“I see you have another appointment.” Boyd pulls himself to his feet. He surveys Ma’s calf-length skirt and cardigan with a grimace. “Well. We’ll be in touch.”

Rivi is struck with the wild urge to beg him to come back instead of leaving her alone with Ma. Instead, she shuts the door behind him and returns to her desk. Ma sits in Boyd’s vacant seat, and Rivi gapes at her. “What are you… what brings you here?”

“I was in the neighborhood, and I thought I’d drop by,” Ma says, as though this is normal. As though Rivi entertains casual visitors at work like she’s in summer camp. As though it makes any sense to send a billionaire away to make small talk with her mother-in-law.

Her head is spinning.

“I’ve been speaking to Suri,” Ma says, because of course that’s what this is about. Of course, Rivi can’t have a moment’s peace from Suri, even at her workplace. “And I do think that you were right to help Avi out.” She looks around the office again, eyes catching on Rivi’s law school diploma on the wall, another award beside it, at the view of Manhattan from the window and the name plate on her desk. You have so much, and they have so little, lingers between them in the air, stagnant and foul. “But it was so petty to flaunt it in Suri’s face.”

“Yes, and I’ve apologized for it.” A dozen times. More. Every day is another overture, and Rivi is running out of steam. “But Suri—”

“It’s been a stressful time for you, of course,” Ma says, reaching out to put a hand on top of Rivi’s. “And we can make allowances for it. But you really must stop lording your financial situation over the other girls. And not just Suri. Atara and Chaya, too. I know it’s the ‘in thing’ for girls to prioritize career above all.” She curls her fingers into quotations for that, before dropping her hand back over Rivi’s. “But they made the decision to put their families first, and they don’t deserve your judgment for that.”

“I don’t… I don’t judge anyone,” Rivi says, flummoxed at this accusation. If anything, she’s felt judged by them.

“Really? I see how you look down on them when we’re all together.” Ma looks disapproving. Her comforting hand on Rivi’s has become a vise, holding her hand in place. “You never let anyone forget what you do. All the other girls struggle to be around you because of it,” she says, and Rivi is startled at that.

She’s kept her distance from Atara, intimidated by Ezra’s only sister. But she’s always been cordial with Chaya. And she genuinely likes Eliana. Are they all talking about her behind her back, whispering their complaints and resentments to Ma? Assuming the worst of Rivi?

She can’t do this right now, can’t think about how badly she’s failed with Ezra’s family. Her life is already a wreck everywhere else; she can’t fall behind at work, too. But her mind is fuzzy and her throat is clogged, and all she can do is imagine the glares of her sisters-in-law. All she can imagine is the bulging weight of their resentment toward her.

Her hurt must show on her face, because Ma’s grip gentles. “They do look up to you. They only want you to respect them like they respect you.” She leans forward, and the desk is Rivi’s only bulwark between them. The phone rings, and Ma looks at it disapprovingly until Rivi moves her hand away from it. “I know you didn’t grow up with sisters, or a mother. This is new territory for you.”

“Right,” Rivi manages, her heart clenched like a fist in her chest. She knows her sisters-in-law don’t like her. It isn’t news. But it hits hard that Ma knows it, too.

“I’ve always hoped to be a mother to you.” Ma gets up, weaves around the desk to gaze down at Rivi. “To give you the family you didn’t have in childhood. But you need to be open to it. If you reach out more, you’ll find there are people willing to listen.” She makes it sound so simple, so easy, and Rivi isn’t sure if she wants to shout or to cry.

She settles for standing up. She has to end this conversation. She has work to do. “That’s really nice of you to offer,” she says, and she reaches over to hug Ma goodbye. It’s quick and halfhearted, but Rivi still blinks away traitorous tears when Ma wraps her arms around her. She’s just so tired. “I’ll do my best.”

Ma looks dissatisfied. What does she want? Rivi to fall sobbing into her arms? Rivi to pour out trauma and regrets until she is pathetic enough to make Suri feel on top again? Rivi isn’t built like that, and she isn’t sorry about that. The vultures circling overhead, searching for a weakness to swoop down on, don’t get to see her vulnerable. No one gets to see her vulnerable.

Once, she was a little girl sitting at a Shabbos table, reading the divrei Torah she’d copied down in school for her distant father and looking to him for a hint of approval. She won’t grovel for approval anymore.

By the time Ma leaves, it’s late and Rivi has lost her lunch break to the distraction. She makes it through a few pages of a brief before her cell phone rings. It’s Gabe, and she feels a sudden rush of warmth and picks up the phone. She wasn’t alone at that Shabbos table, not ever.

“Hey, Rivi.” Gabe sounds comfortingly calm, and Rivi entertains the thought of putting work aside for a longer conversation. “Quick question. You don’t remember a Moish Garfinkel ever visiting, do you? A friend of Abba’s?”

“The name rings a bell,” she admits. But frustration rushes in a moment later. She knows why Gabe is asking, what he must be doing. “You said you’d keep me out of this. Can’t you just leave it alone?”

“I want to know who I am. How can you just ignore it?” Gabe sounds so reasonable, so logical, and Rivi hates that calm she had found so comforting before. “Look, I found this—”

“No,” Rivi grits out, and she hangs up and buries her face in her hands.

She is frayed nerves and rising stress by the time she makes it home. The commute is harried and there’s a delay so she misses bedtime, which is even worse. Even Abba managed to read her bedtime stories.

And maybe that’s why she’s so on edge when Ezra says, “Rivi, you can’t really be thinking about taking on that client. Look at you tonight.” He says it pleadingly, as though he is her only voice of reason.

“The problem isn’t Boyd,” she says shortly. “The problem is — other things,” she finishes, because she can’t explain to him that his family hates her, that her father is a liar, that the rest of the world is crashing down around her. “Boyd is fine. I can win his suit.”

Ezra looks pained. “Rivi,” he says, and there’s a note in his voice, a sharpness that Rivi doesn’t expect from him. “I don’t want you to take this client.”

“It’s my decision,” she says, sharp and frustrated. “You’re not there. You’re just… making assumptions about what I can and can’t do. And I can do this. I’m good at my job.” Is that arrogant or just defensive? Would Ezra agree with his mother?

His eyes darken. “And I don’t get a say in this?”

“You got a say. I listened. I disagree,” she says tightly. “Can’t you trust me on this?”

But she can see in the way that his face goes stony, and his jaw works beneath his skin that he can’t, and that she’s just ruined something else, something precious that she’d loved.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 916)