For a moment, Martin doesn’t answer, still staring at Penina’s Post-it with his face unreadable. Then he must decide to let her obvious fib go, and his face splits into a familiar smile. “That’s why you’re one of our best. No stone left unturned!” he announces cheerfully, and disappears into his office.

Penina feels guilty enough to do a little more research on the exploit, then begins the patch that should take care of it. It’ll take a while to process, which gives her more downtime — so much of her job is setting up processes and then sitting around, waiting for them to execute — and she can return to the database and put in Moshe Garfinkel.

There are fewer hits that are Jersey-specific, but still plenty. She scrolls through old scans of newspapers and poorly digitized documents until one of them jumps out at her.

It’s just a name in a death index from the mid-90s, tucked in between GARFINKEL MARCUS and GARFINKEL RAIZEL, but it’s the four-letter abbreviated name beneath PLACE OF RESIDENCE that catches her eye.

BEAR HUDSO, it reads, the beginning of a town name and its county, and there’s only one place that could be. “Bearwood,” she murmurs, her eyes sharpening with new focus. It must be the right Moish Garfinkel. This is too strong a coincidence. And if Moish Garfinkel was in Bearwood, same as Avigdor Cohen, same as Rivi and Gabe….

A new suspicion blooms within her, a  thought that might change everything. This time, she searches for birth certificates for Riva Cohen.

A few pop up. Not as many as she’d get for Gavriel Cohen, but a decent number. When she narrows down the birth year, there are only three, and all are in Israel. “There’s no way,” Penina whispers, her eyes fixed on the screen. But she types with trembling fingers, stabbing out a new search term.

There is one birth certificate in her search parameters for a RIVA GARFINKEL, born in Bearwood, New Jersey, on September 16, 1990. Her next search yields a GAVRIEL GARFINKEL, also of Bearwood, born in April 1993.

Penina is a good friend. She’s had Rivi’s birthday memorized since college. And she remembers being engaged and spending hours texting Rivi in the midst of Pesach cleaning, debating whether it would be appropriate for her to get Gabe a birthday present.

She is still staring at the screen when her phone buzzes, vibrating incessantly against the hard laminate. It’s Rivi, and Penina mechanically picks up the phone.

“Hi.” If her voice sounds strangled, Rivi doesn’t seem to notice it.

“Penina! I’m sorry if I’m calling you at work. Actually, this is work.” She laughs, and she sounds busy in all the ways that Rivi loves to be busy, in that rush of a case that she’s enjoying. “I’ve got this new client, suing his sons — long story — over corporate espionage. I was hoping you could come on board as a consultant. You specialize in these kinds of security breaches, right?”

“If it’s—” Penina struggles to make her voice sound normal. She knows that Rivi doesn’t want to hear about the investigation, but this is too much to sit on, to hold back from Rivi. This is Rivi’s life, and she can’t chat with her as though everything is normal. “If you think it was a cybersecurity leak… Rivi,” she says helplessly. “I found something out.”

A pause. Rivi’s voice is deceptively casual, but Penina can hear the edge beneath it. “If it’s about Gabe’s little project—”

“It’s your name,” Penina blurts out. “I think this is you. Riva Garfinkel, born in Bearwood on September 16, 1990.”

“What?” There’s a thud over the phone line, a hand hitting a desk. “What are you saying?”

“I think it’s you. I think your father’s real name might have been Moish… Moshe Garfinkel.” Penina squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, recovers her composure. “I just figured it out. I haven’t even emailed Gabe and Hillel yet.”

“Well, if you haven’t emailed Gabe.” Rivi sounds strained, uncertain. “Look, I’m not the only Riva to be born in Bearwood. I’m not even sure if I was born in Bearwood. My father hid so much….” Her voice trails off.

She’s floundering, and Penina is caught between guilt and sympathy. “There’s a Gavriel Garfinkel, too. Born April 2, 1993. Also in Bearwood,” she says gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to throw this on you out of nowhere.”

“And yet, you did.” Rivi seems to regain her bearings with lawyerly speed, and Penina hears the moment that she goes on the offensive. “I thought you weren’t going to drag me into this. Leave it to Gabe and his… his incessant need to know things. Sometimes we don’t need to dig up these things. Sometimes we’re better off not knowing!”

Her voice rises, and Penina is reminded of a moment between them years ago, Rivi shivering outside on a cold winter’s night after her own sheva brachos. It had been with her husband’s family, and Penina had come along to play the role of Rivi’s family. But Rivi’s father had found out about it and attended without invitation, sat in a corner as Ezra had tried to make awkward conversation, and Rivi had fled the building.

He can’t just let go! He can’t stand the thought that I might have found a stable, better family! She had been on the verge of a breakdown, and Penina had slipped an arm around Rivi’s shoulders to support her when she broke down.

But she hadn’t broken down. She’d just shaken, overwhelmed and furious, and her voice had gotten shrill but never turned to tears.

Rivi will turn brittle and withered instead of breaking, and Penina doesn’t want to be the one to make her atrophy away.

“Okay,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.” She casts around for a safe topic, something safe to discuss that might give them distance. “So what’s this new lawsuit?”

“I can give you more details once you’re signed on to it,” Rivi promises, her voice still unsteady. “It’s… well, do you know who Garrett Boyd is?”

“I’m not sure.” Penina tries to place the name. “Big political donor?”

“He’s this… he deals with auction houses. It’s a lucrative business, I guess, because he’s… well, a big political donor. A big name in general.” Rivi sounds calmer now, a little more enthusiastic as she settles into her explanation. “He asked for me for this case. Can you believe that?” She lowers her voice to a pleased little murmur. “Not my firm. Not my boss. Me, personally.”

“That’s incredible. Look at you, Mrs. Big-Deal, Esquire.” Penina means it genuinely, though she keeps it playful. “You’re really going places.”

“Yeah.” Rivi sighs, a happy little noise, then turns somber. “Ezra doesn’t love it. He thinks I’m taking on too much.”

“You always take on too much,” Penina says fondly. “He knows you.”

“He thinks this is past my limit. But it isn’t really fair.” Rivi suddenly sounds tired. “I’ve got all this stuff going on because of… because of my father. Because of Ezra’s family.”

“Is Suri still not talking to you?” That woman can hold a grudge like no other. Penina’s never found her as intimidating as Rivi does, but she supposes that it’s because she isn’t basically chained to her through marriage. “Still, that’s no reason for you to give up a job you’re excited about. You should at least have something exciting to focus on right now. You deserve it. Especially after dealing with your in-laws.”

Penina absently returns to her work, phone tucked in between her shoulder and her ear. Someone at her client’s office is asking for a detailed explanation of the exploit, and Penina types quickly, the comforting clacking of the keyboard the background music to her life. “You should have Gabe mediate between them and you. I don’t think they’d know what to do with him.”

“Does anyone?” Rivi sounds fondly exasperated. Then, more cautiously, she asks, “You two have been spending a lot of time together lately, haven’t you?”

“I thought we weren’t talking about that.” Then she feels obligated to defend herself, conscious of how it might sound to an onlooker. “And not really. Honestly, it’s just been a few phone calls or emails between us and Hillel about the… situation. And he’s been in the office with Hillel while I was working there. It’s strictly business.”

“Mm-hmm.” Rivi’s tone is politely skeptical. Penina feels a flush of warm embarrassment rise from her neck to her ears. She’s been careful to keep up a strong barrier there. There’s nothing to feel self-conscious about. But there’s something about the prolonged silence on Rivi’s end that makes Penina want to fill it with excuses. She manages to restrain herself.

“I just want you to be careful,” Rivi says, the sincerity bleeding through the call. “What he did to you was inexcusable. And you know I’m always Team Penina on this one.”

There is nothing quite as reassuring as Rivi being on her team. It’s always made her feel unstoppable and protected, like every impossible snarl can be untangled with enough determination. Like Rivi can hold her up through sheer willpower and fierce loyalty alone. Rivi isn’t the most empathic of Penina’s friends, nor the most gently sensitive, but she cares so deeply that it always bleeds through her actions.

Today, though, it feels loaded. “I… I think I’ve finally found some closure on the broken engagement and Gabe. We’ve talked it over.”

“Penina.” Now Rivi sounds worried. “Don’t get too attached, okay? Gabe didn’t stick around last time, and he probably won’t this time, either. Not once he’s solved his… his mystery.” There’s a grimness to her pronouncement, a resentment she doesn’t quite conceal.

“I’m okay,” Penina promises. “You don’t have to worry about me.” She feels silly and young after Rivi’s warning, like it’s an admonishment that she shouldn’t need. And she doesn’t. She knows what Gabe is like. She’s not a starry-eyed girl anymore, ready to overlook warning signs to believe in a better future. She’s a mother, a professional, a divorcée — which makes Rivi’s warnings a moot point, anyway. Gabe is a Kohein. (Isn’t he? The birth certificate on her screen taunts her like a possibility.) She is keeping an impersonal distance. Her feet are firmly on the ground.

Rivi still sounds dubious when she hangs up, and Penina closes all her Moish Garfinkel-related windows in a fit of pique and focuses on nothing but work for the rest of the day. But she’s on edge now, something scraping at her mind like a constant drilling. There’s a perpetual prickle in her spine, a heat that has her twisting around as though she’s being watched.

Rivi’s words must have gotten to her, made her uneasy and self-conscious. She straightens in her chair. Whirls around when she sees a flash of movement, but it’s just Martin sauntering to the water cooler. She exhales. She’s being ridiculous. This is about the Gabe situation and the strangeness of the Cohen… Garfinkel situation and her unease with both of them.

But there’s still a chill at the back of her neck, an eerie certainty that something is wrong. That she has awakened something dangerous today, and there’s no going back.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 917)