“Chasya…makes me think. She surprises me. More than anyone else I have met. Even my professors”

It is a comfortable carriage, with lovely, soft leather upholstery. Hannah runs her fingers over it, then pulls the blanket up over her arms. Emmy is snoring gently, and Felix has his head in a book. And she just sits, disbelieving.

Shneur offered to join them, but she does not want to take him on a wild goose chase. Ernst offered, too, but the guest conductor is an ogre and Ernst could not take time off without risking a public dressing down.

So she travels the road to disappointment. It will not be a surprise to find nothing at their destination. It’s what she expects. But the possibilities graze her throat, making it hard to swallow.

Felix peers at Emmy’s closed eyelids and then addresses her. “Did you know, Mama?”

“What?”

“About Chasya?”

“Know what?”

“That she has plans to move to Eretz Yisrael.”

Hannah lets out a long breath. No. She cannot support him through this. There is only so much emotion that one can contend with. Felix does not realize that the faces from the photographs haunt her dreams. He does not know how grief makes her lonely.

Oh, she could share it with Ernst, and he would try to understand, how every loss carries a deep separation. You seem to be living the same life as always, one that parallels the lives of your neighbors and friends and the people who say hello to you. You seem to walk the same streets, pray in the same shul, live in the same city, but you don’t, not at all. And this is true even of your family.

Perhaps this is why there’s a custom not to greet mourners. Do not dare suppose that you can build that bridge into their world.

She sighs. Felix waits for her reply. “No. No, I did not know. But now that you say it, I am not surprised.”

“Why? What’s there for her, apart from dust and fellaheen and malaria?”

“What’s there for her in Paris or London or New York? She would be adrift there, alone. In Eretz Yisrael, she will find companionship.”

“Who? All the strange people who do not fit in? Who are living under the Ottomans?” His voice is raised and she puts her fingers to her lips. This is not a conversation for Emmy to hear.

“Well, Becca is living under them, too.”

He shakes his head and a shadow flickers across the wall of the carriage.

“It is dangerous. It is a barren, empty place.”

“No more dangerous than where she grew up. And nothingness would not deter Chasya.”

“