It wasn’t a pastime; it was a bit of an obsession. As though doing the math would make the numbers change

SO...

Um…

Maybe Yechiel had a point.

Raizy rolled her chair closer to her screen and scrolled back up in her email, carefully reading every listing that Pinny Leitner had sent.

The new condos were out of the question — the prices were, well, through the roof. The one-family houses — had she really been dreaming?

She stopped at one listing. 16x50/36 on a 16x90 lot. 3 bdrms, EIK, dining room, two porches. Needs TLC.

A total square footage of 1,376, attached from both sides, and ‘needs TLC,’ she knew, was a euphemism for ‘needs to be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up.’

Three bedrooms? With their third child on the way, they’d be using all the sleeping space on the day they moved in. What about living space? And not to be greedy or anything, but, like, guests? Was that idea a thing of the past?

Dragging the cursor over the listing text, the image of Yitzchok on his scooter floated through her mind. The boy had a whole bunch of energy and yearned to spend every spare minute of his life in the great outdoors. That meant that Raizy had to follow him up and down the street, with Chavi in her push-bike, for endless hours every day. Her dream house — a totally modest one, honestly — had at least a narrow driveway they could fence in, so the kids could play safely. Was that too much to ask for?

And the excellent, excellent price? It would take a whole lot of Kornigs and Weinmans to reach the 20 percent down payment amount required on this steal-of-a-deal.

Was she being delusional? Could they even afford this?