Gosh?
The guy held out a hand, and despite his sophisticated haircut, expensive clothes, and intelligent eyes, he seemed adorably awkward. His eyes were blue—startlingly blue, like open skies and cool waters and…and something I didn’t think I’d ever find my way back to again.
My gut tightened sharply with a warning jab of irritation, so I forced my focus down to his hand, anything but his eyes. Thehand was long and sturdy and tanned, with slender fingers. A good hand. A strong hand. Warming mine on this suddenly far colder day. His hand was too warm, actually, too steady.
And there it was again—that flicker of story I shouldn’t know, shouldn’t want to know, waiting under his skin.
“I’m Maxwell Graham,” he said as we shook. “Max, really.”
I blinked up at him and pulled my hand away. From the way he’d said it, clearly, Maxwell here had thought I would recognize his name, but I didn’t. I didn’t know anything about him or his disappearing family in the giant house with the flat roof and the horses all around.
“Um,” I said, going for innocent. “Were you a friend of Mordechai’s?”
“What? Oh.” Max blushed, and finally, I did allow myself to focus on his face. He was as cute as he’d been in Mordechai’s photos—tall and lean, his angular features cut with sharp cheekbones and softened by a slightly full mouth.
That mouth tightened as he spoke again. “Sorry, no. I—well, I’ve been trying to meet with him. I looked him up on the internet, found him, I mean, from articles he’d written. Stories about him.”
I nodded. I wasn’t really into the whole body of work about Mordechai available online. He’d always been super careful not to mention me, and besides that, he’d been around for a lot longer than my decade and change with him. Any of his articles I’d found online I’d already read in his office at one point or another.
“We talked once, on the phone, after I contacted him,” Max continued. “He seemed interested. I sent an entire package…” He looked at me expectantly. “Anyway, I hadn’t heard from him, and then I read online yesterday that hedied.”
He sure did.
“Yes!” I said quickly, startled by the smugness of the voice inside my head. “Yes, that caught us all by surprise.”
Max glanced sharply at me. “They’re sitting shiva or whatever in there. I’ve never felt more lost in my life.”
That made me smile, despite everything. “It can be a little overwhelming. They’re very nice to people who aren’t Jewish, though, or at least they have been to me.” Suddenly, that anomaly struck me. “You’re not Jewish?”
His smile was self-deprecating. “Like I said, I’ve never felt more lost.”
“But then—why a rabbi?” It really was none of my business, but curiosity shot through me. “Catholics kind of corner the market on, ah, Mordechai’s specialty. And he wasn’t even a rabbi anymore.”
“Yeah, well. Let’s just say good help is hard to find.” Max’s words were light, but there was no mistaking the pain in his eyes. Pain and fatigue.
I recognized it, of course, the curious mix of defeat, bewilderment, fear, and horror, tempered with the faintest twist of hope.
Hope was always the most pathetic.
And it wasn’t surprising that Max hadn’t found anyone to help him in the Catholic church. Demon possession was seriously old-school stuff, and not many of the current crop of Roman Catholic priests thought enough of it anymore to go through the training to become exorcists. They also hadsomany rules. Mordechai hated rules even more than he hated demons, I sometimes thought. He didn’t care who he helped. It was just what he did.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry he didn’t get back to you in time. He was a good man.”
“He was.” Max stared at me hard, seemed to come to some decision. “So, I was given your name by one of the ladies inside. Shewhisperedit.”
I grimaced. “Whispered?”
He nodded, studying me with his clear light eyes, like I was some mystery he was supposed to solve.
My stomach clenched again.Good luck with that.
“I was standing there, not sure of whether I should sit or stand,” he continued. “She came up to me and asked me how I knew the rabbi. I said I’d contacted him for help—nothing more than that—and she patted my hand and smiled, and told me to find, well, you.”
“She’s got the wrong idea. Sorry.” I turned away as Max reached out for me, his hand connecting with my arm. Once again, a jolt of awareness moved through me at the touch of his fingers, half dangerous, half reassuring. I didn’t know this Max or his electrical current, but a part of me definitely wanted to find out more about him. The other part, the darker, twisting part, wanted him to disappear into a hole. And the two kept changing sides.
“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to be rude, but my family’s in pretty desperate straits. Based on everything I read, I was convinced that Rabbi Mordechai could help.”
I sighed. “He probably could have helped. He was really good at…what he did.”
