Gabe doesn’t say, If I spend another minute in this house watching you two ignore each other I might burst

T

hump. Thump. Thump. The spoon hits the side of the bowl over and over again, so loud that Gabe can hear it from the living room. Or maybe it’s just that the house is unnaturally silent, and every tiny sound is magnified.

Scrape. Scrape. Pages turn at the dining room table, each one sliding into place over the others. Scrape. Thump. The noises of an ordinary Thursday night at the Greenbergs’, and it should be comfortable and familiar.

But today, even Gabe can feel the tension that chills the house, the icy resentment that frosted each room once the kids had gone to bed. He isn’t one to notice when people are fighting. But with Rivi and Ezra, the silence is a killer. It seeps into everything, impossible to overlook, and it makes Gabe desperately uncomfortable.

He clears his throat, struck with the irrational urge to say something just to ease the coldness. Ezra’s body is as tight as a statue, bent over a sefer with his eyes glued to the text as though he’s afraid to look up. Rivi is moving through the kitchen, walking light-footed to the fridge and opening it. They don’t talk to each other, and Gabe stares at his laptop screen and does his best to ignore it.

Penina would call that protecting himself. Maybe she’s right.

But that reminder of her unvarnished judgment is enough for him to snap the laptop shut and get up.

He wanders to the kitchen. Rivi’s lips are pressed together as she cleans strawberries, rinsing them off after she soaks them. She doesn’t look up when he enters the room, and Gabe looks at the spread of crumbly batter in her pan and grins.

“Is that your strawberry kugel? I didn’t know that you still made it.”

“It’s a patchkeh,” Rivi admits, her face going marginally softer. “I usually don’t have the time. I’d forgotten how much you liked it.”