“I don’t understand,” Libby repeated. “Why suspended? Just why, Deena? Why?”

Akiva Frankel had experienced unbelievable moments in his life.

When he was seven and he sang with MBD on stage. Flying over the city in a helicopter when he was nine. Paragliding on the Kinneret during his bar mitzvah trip to Israel. Proposing to Libby. Holding his firstborn moments after she was born. Moments that felt so wonderful, so perfect, he’d wondered if they were real.

But creating a GoFundMe page because his little millionaire brother wanted to keep his wife’s struggles on the DL was unbelievable in an entirely different way.

Mali came bursting into the room singing, “We Shake the Lulav.” He smiled at her distractedly.

“Tatty, sing with me!” she demanded. “Shake the lulav upside and downside and rightside and downside…”

He tried not to laugh as she garbled the words. Libby walked in; he pointed at their four-year-old.

“That song made a whole lot more sense than what I’m doing right now.”

Libby came up behind him to peer over his shoulder. “No!”

Akiva nodded tiredly. “Yup.”

Libby wrinkled her nose. “That’s really… that’s just too much.”

Akiva leaned back over the keyboard. “Hey, Frankels do everything big, remember? Including insanity.”

Libby was experiencing a strange, helpless feeling that rose from her stomach and spread across her chest. Was this what failure felt like? She was not a fan. Not a fan at all.

Deena, sitting defiantly on the couch, arms crossed tightly, eyes narrowed, as thought it was Libby who had done something wrong…

“I don’t understand,” Libby repeated. “Why suspended? Just why, Deena? Why?”

But there was no way she was going to get an answer to her question.