When she was 27 and floating on air during her engagement, Gabe had been all she’d thought about. She imagined children, a family, a future being Rivi’s favorite sister-in-law. She imagined building a better home than the Cohen kids had had growing up, gentle and loving and as warm as her own childhood home.

Then Gabe left, and Rivi showed up at her house, pale with anger and despair. It hit Penina hard — he’d vanished without a word of explanation, just a few days after their last date. There had been no apology, no excuses, nothing for her to hold on to. He’d just gone, and Penina slammed back down to earth so quickly that she struggled to get up again.

She got engaged again soon after, and it felt almost like vengeance. Gabe hadn’t stopped her from living her best life. She wouldn’t sit around mourning his disappearance. Rivi, wracked with guilt, had been overly supportive of Penina’s marriage, and Penina still wonders: maybe Penina had rushed into the marriage because of Gabe. Maybe this, too, is a grudge to lay at his feet.

Still, she has Daniel now, and she will bear no grudges when Daniel is everything to her.

Daniel is inside on the couch when she sees a familiar figure make his way toward her house, as though summoned by her thoughts. Penina winces and averts her eyes, focusing on her laptop screen. What would he be doing here? Maybe he somehow knows the Kramers in the basement apartment and he’s just going to visit them.

But when she next peeks up, Gabe is pushing the gate open and making his way toward Penina’s porch. She stares at him, putting on her most forbidding glare, and he has the good sense to hesitate at the bottom of the stairs.

“I didn’t realize you worked from home,” he says.

The thing that irritates Penina most about Gabe is how he acts so normal around her, as though they’re only acquaintances united by their love for Rivi. She presses her lips together and says curtly, “Then why are you here?” It’s inappropriate, really, even if Gabe never walks up the steps to the porch. But Gabe has never had a good sense of what is and isn’t appropriate.

Gabe shrugs. “I was on my way to my father’s house. I don’t really drive anymore, so I walked that way. And I remembered Rivi mentioning that you live on this block, so I came down here, and saw you on the porch. I thought that we could talk.” He averts his eyes for a moment, a flicker of self-consciousness on his face. “I know you haven’t really… been willing… until now.”

“I’m not willing now,” Penina says tightly. Why is she even still sitting here? She doesn’t have casual conversations with men. But he’s not just any man, she reminds herself. And he owes her something important. “As it is, I don’t work well from home. If Daniel weren’t feeling so sick, I’d have gone in today.”

Gabe looks suddenly concerned. “He’s sick? Is it—” He clears his throat. “Is it bad?”

Penina shrugs, unwilling to give him more information about her family. “I mean, I think it’s a stomach virus. He’ll live.”

“And you stayed home to help with a stomach virus,” Gabe says slowly.

There’s a weird degree of judgment in his voice. Penina’s hackles rise. “Should I have someone else here making him food or taking his temperature? Is there anyone else better suited to look after him?”

“I don’t know.” Gabe holds up his hands, eyes wide with alarm. “I just thought… it’s a little strange, isn’t it? For him to keep you home from work over a stomach virus.”

“It’s not really your business,” Penina says stiffly. “And it’s really not that strange. I can work from home whenever I need to. Perks of the field. I’ve stayed home for far less. A cold, or ice cream—”

“Ice cream,” Gabe repeats. “Your husband makes you stay home from work to get him ice cream?” He lowers his voice. “Do you really think that’s… I mean, is that healthy?”

And this entire conversation, ridiculous and probing, suddenly makes so much sense that the hostility drains away. Penina tilts her head back and laughs, loud enough that Daniel hears her and pokes his head outside to see what’s going on.

Penina holds a hand out to him, and Daniel slips out the front door, barefoot and a little pasty from the virus. He tucks himself under her arm and squints at Gabe, nose scrunched in four-year-old distrust. “This is Daniel,” Penina says. “My son.”

Gabe’s eyes clear. “Oh,” he says, taking a step back. “Oh.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I thought—”

“I know what you thought.” Penina’s divorce had been finalized only a few months after Daniel was born. Her ex has since remarried and has a new family, and Daniel visits them once a month. The rest of the time, he’s with her, the two of them happily ensconced in this little house together. “Daniel, this is Tante Rivi’s brother.”

“Oh. Hi!” Daniel waves vigorously, then announces, “I’m going to finish my coloring page. It’s cold out here.”

“Because you’re barefoot,” Penina calls after him, but Daniel has already disappeared inside. She turns back to Gabe, eyebrows raised. “Now that you’re done questioning my fitness as a wife—”

Gabe looks chagrined and Penina offers him a terse smile, “What brings you here?”

Gabe takes a breath. “I’m worried about Rivi. Has she been talking to you?”

It’s the only topic she would ever entertain from him. “She’s struggling,” Penina concedes. “But that makes sense. She lost her father, and she can’t even move on properly, because there are all these questions about the body that was in the grave beforehand. And now she’s supposed to go on vacation in ten days and pretend that everything is fine. Anyone would be buckling under the strain of all of this.”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so, too.” Gabe shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, and Penina remembers that he, too, has just lost his father to this convoluted situation. But right now, he only seems concerned about Rivi, which is enough of a point in his favor that she almost thaws toward him.

“I thought I’d stick around for a little bit until everything is sorted out. Help clean out the house, too. I have some flexibility, and Rivi has enough on her plate right now.” He ducks his head. “I’m really just here to help.”

Like this, he almost seems apologetic, and Penina dares to be a little less angry.

“Last night, I went out with Shimmy to hunt bugs,” Gabe continues. “We made a terrarium for the best ones, until Rivi discovered it and made us throw the whole thing out.”

Speaking of his nephew, Gabe’s face transforms into that boyish expression that had her so charmed when they’d been engaged. It’s comfortable, familiar, and Penina is reminded again of how well they’d gotten along. They really could have been something.

Not anymore. She’s divorced now, and he’s a Kohein, so the opportunity of a relationship between them is long gone. And there remains the question of why, after all this time. She stares down at Gabe, dissatisfied with the calm that has settled over their interaction.

She is so tired of acting calm and polite around him when the humiliation and abandonment still burn so deep. She musters her boldness and presses on, ruining the pleasant conversation with inconvenient reality.

“I have to ask. I understand why you came back, and why you’re staying now, for your sister. But I still don’t understand why you left. Why you ran off—” Like a coward, is what she doesn’t say.

“And why you didn’t have the decency to tell me that you were going. We were in a good place. We didn’t have any issues that would have broken up the engagement. I knew exactly who you were, and you knew who I was. So why did you run?”

Gabe twitches, and Penina notes his discomfort with only slight satisfaction. She doesn’t need him to be uncomfortable. She only wants the truth she deserved, even six years later.

He clears his throat. “It wasn’t… I didn’t leave because of you,” he says, hands moving deeper into the pockets of his jacket.

“That’s not true.” She’s sure of it. “You’d turned down offers to travel for your job before. You told me then that you weren’t really interested in leaving Rivi and Ezra, and you were talking about getting a teaching position at a university. So if you picked up and left, it wasn’t because of your career. You would have talked to me about it if it were. You left instead of breaking off the engagement yourself. And I’d appreciate it if you could at least be honest with me now.” She keeps her voice steely, the tone of a woman who has had to advocate for herself too often in her work and life.

Gabe takes a step back. “I’m really sorry,” he says, as though that is all that needs to be said. “I should have said that before.” It’s not enough. It’s never going to be enough. But he’s clearly finished with the conversation. “I’ve got to run and get some work done at my father’s house while I still have the time. It was good to see you, Penina.” He twists around and heads for the gate as she stares after him, frustrated and annoyed.

Of course, when faced with a demand for honesty, Gabe chooses to run again.

To be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 905)