“It was a required item on the menu every Shabbos.” When they were younger, when Rivi had jumped into the task of cooking and baking each Thursday night so they could eat something other than the Shake ’n Bake that Abba would make from their Tomchei Shabbos chicken. She couldn’t have been more than eight or nine when she’d started. Abba didn’t like her working at a flame, but Rivi was adamant, and they all knew that Rivi was the one who was really in charge. “I used to spread the crumbs, remember?”

“You used to eat the crumbs.” Rivi swipes at him with her fork before Gabe can successfully retrieve some batter from the bottom of the pan. He drops his hand, chastened, a splash of strawberry cool against his wrist. “We’re going to Atara for Friday night. I thought I should make something.”

“And I will be going to Hillel,” Gabe says immediately. He’s a lot more comfortable with Hillel and his family than he’ll ever be with Rivi’s sisters-in-law. “Is Atara the one who hates you?”

“That’s Suri. But… yes, her, too.” Rivi mashes more strawberries into her bowl, her face shadowed with unhappiness. “She’ll also be there. My mother-in-law is insisting on it. It’ll be a disaster.”

“Absolutely not.” Gabe successfully fishes some crumbs out of the bowl. They’re exactly as good as he remembers them. “No one who tastes this strawberry kugel could ever hate you. This kugel alone could resolve the Tuareg-junta conflict in the Sahel. Could make peace in Nagorno-Karabakh. Could keep Shira and Blimi from fighting over that redheaded doll.”

By the time he’s done, Rivi is laughing. It’s still strained, and her eyes flicker to the doorway to the dining room, where Ezra is learning silently. But it’s something, and Gabe is very pleased with himself.

“Okay, you win. I’ll make you one for Hillel and Ahuva, too,” Rivi offers, which is an additional victory. “Wish I could be there instead of—” Her phone rings in strident interruption, and her eyes widen. “Boyd. I’ve got to take this, Gabe.”

“It’s fine,” Gabe says, but Rivi already has the phone to her ear, lapsing into lawyer-speak as she spreads strawberries across the crumbs.

“He what? I would strongly caution you against interacting with your sons while the suit is ongoing… yes, but he’s expecting that—” She’s forgotten Gabe, and he steals a few more crumbs and leaves the room to give her privacy.

In the dining room, Ezra is still staring at the page of his sefer, but his eyes are far away, and Gabe doesn’t think he sees anything on the page. He clears his throat, feeling vaguely responsible for the tension in the house. He’d been the one to encourage Ezra to talk to Rivi about the job in the first place, though he hadn’t thought it would go so badly. It just goes to show that communication is pretty terrible, after all.

“I think I’m going to run out,” he says. “Head back to my father’s house to do a little more cleanup.”

“Now?” Ezra looks up, surprised. “It’s nine thirty. Why don’t you wait until tomorrow?”

“I’m just feeling restless,” Gabe says truthfully. He doesn’t say, If I spend another minute in this house watching you two ignore each other I might burst, which is also true. “I’ll just do an hour or two. We’re making real progress.”

“Do you want some help?” Ezra looks suddenly hopeful. “I wouldn’t mind getting out tonight.”

“Nah, no need. Another time.” Gabe keeps it vague, and Ezra looks disappointed. He returns to his not-learning reluctantly as Rivi argues with her client in the kitchen.

He probably would appreciate some space from Rivi, but Gabe has other plans for tonight beyond just cleaning out the house.

There’s something that’s been niggling at him since he visited his old yeshivah yesterday, since Penina called with the news that she’d found Moish Garfinkel. Since the vague promise of a true identity had hung over his head, a Gabe Garfinkel.

Terrible name. Like a character in one of the old story tapes from when he was a kid. Gavriel Garfinkel. What a tongue twister of a name. Had Abba and Ima thought it was silly when they named him? Was Ima still aware enough to help name him, or had she already been sick, fading away?

Had Ima passed away just after giving birth to him, or was that a lie, too?

Gabe pushes aside that doubt. Abba hadn’t been truthful about a lot, in the end, but he’d always been genuine about Ima. He used to talk about her when Gabe was little — stilted, painful anecdotes. Gabe has seen the pictures of her with him as an infant, the sickly woman who’d stared down at him with weak smiles, her Gavriel Garfinkel.

A boy he’d never been.

He’d never heard the name Moish Garfinkel before yesterday. But Rivi thought she’d heard the name somewhere, had some vague recollection of it. Could it have been somewhere in the house?

When he arrives at the house, he unlocks the door and steps inside, retracing Rivi’s steps from Sunday. She had gone straight to the study. Or maybe she stopped in the kitchen first?

He pops his head into the kitchen, but all he sees are stacks of bowls and pans on the table, neatly organized to be packaged up again. There’s nothing on the fridge except a photo, taped in the top right-hand corner, of Gabe and Rivi and Abba at Rivi’s high school graduation. Rivi is doing that closed-lipped smile that she used to think looked classy and Gabe is turned a little away from the camera, distracted by something else. Abba is smiling at the camera, eyes shadowed but so proud, and Gabe feels the memory stick in his throat.

He turns away hastily, heading to the study.

There’s a large recycling garbage bag on the floor, packed with papers and tied closed. It wouldn’t be there. Penina would have vetted the papers before they’d been thrown out, and she probably would have remembered Moish Garfinkel if she’d seen the name.

So it must be somewhere else in the study. He shoots a quick text to Rivi. Which part of the study did you clean out?

Why are you asking? comes the wary response. Then, almost immediately, file cabinet.

The cabinet’s first two drawers are mostly empty, a few scattered papers near the bottom of each. The bottom cabinet is still full, and Rivi had jammed extra things into it. Old report cards. A few bills. A few essay drafts in Gabe’s handwriting, marked up with Abba’s red pen like he’d been Gabe’s English teacher. Gabe shakes his head at them and moves them aside, plucking up an old ID badge below them.

It reads, MOISH GARFINKEL, BEARWOOD PROTECTION SERVICES.

“Oh.” Gabe sits back with a thump. His heart pounds and he stares at the badge with building disbelief.

There it is. A concrete confirmation of Abba’s real identity. Not necessarily, the investigative voice in his head argues. There’s no picture on the badge, no indication that this had been Abba’s. But Penina has already done the real work, and Gabe is really just backing it up right now with additional proof.

He needs to call someone. Hillel. He’ll call Hillel, who will talk about this like it’s just a grand adventure until Gabe starts to believe it. He hits Hillel’s house number on his phone.

“Hello?” It’s Ahuva Pretter who answers the phone.

“Hi. Sorry,” he adds, registering that it’s after ten by now. “I know it’s late.”

Ahuva’s voice softens. “Gabe!” she says, as though he’s one of her sons instead of a man just a half-dozen years her junior. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll go get Hillel.”

A familiar squeaking noise distracts Gabe for a moment. He recognizes it, a sound burned into his instinctive memory. Someone’s just pushed open the screen door of Abba’s house. “Oh, hang on. I’ll call back in a few minutes.”

“In here!” he calls out loudly. It must be Rivi, seizing an excuse to escape her house to interrogate him about why he’s searching Abba’s house this late. “Rivi?”

There’s no answer. Gabe frowns, tucking the badge into his pocket and rising. “Rivi, is that you?”

A prickle of unease. “Hillel? Penina?” Had he left the door open when he came inside? Is there someone else in here? “Hello?”

The house is dark and still. There’s none of the energy that comes with an occupied house, movements and noises and the hum of radiators and computers and appliances. Gabe can only hear his own breathing, too rapid to exude calm, and the sound of the wind in the trees outside.

But someone is in the house.

His thoughts race. Maybe he’d been mistaken. Maybe the wind had pulled the screen door open for a moment, had made the squeaking noise. Does it latch properly? There had been a time when he was younger when it hadn’t, when Abba had settled down in front of it with his tools time and time again to try to fix it.

That must be it. He feels a wave of relief. If he goes over to the door, he’ll see that it’s just not closed.

But he still grabs a folding chair as he leaves the study, ready to swing it at an assailant. He makes his way to the front door slowly, glancing over his shoulder more than once, and he presses his hand against the screen door.

It holds firm, latched in place.

Gabe chews on his lip, an old nervous habit, and calls Rivi. She picks up after three rings, her voice irritable. “I’m on the other line with Boyd, Gabe, so if this is about Abba—”

“You’re not here?”

“What?” Rivi sounds bewildered. “I’ve been on the phone this whole time. Why would I be there?”

“I think… I think someone’s in the house.”

“What?”

“I don’t know.” It’s quiet. Too quiet. Wouldn’t he have heard someone walking through the house? Unless he’d missed it, distracted by his find, and the squeaking of the door had been someone leaving instead. “I heard the door, but no one’s here.”

“Gabe, come back here right now,” Rivi orders. “Do not search the house. Just get out of there. It could be robbers. Or an axe murderer.” She sounds panicked, and it sends a bolt of renewed apprehension through Gabe. Nothing frightens Rivi. She’s fearless. “Gabe, now.”

“Yeah. I’m going.” He steps out of the house and locks the door.

And almost immediately, a dark sedan roars to life down the street. Gabe twists to stare at it, then races down the porch stairs as the car takes off into the night. It’s gone in seconds and he’s left at the base of the lawn, breathing hard, sure of only two things.

That car left when its occupant saw him emerge.

And there isn’t someone in the house right now. He’d heard them leave, not enter.

While Gabe had sat in the study, obliviously flipping through papers, someone had been creeping through Abba’s house.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 918)