“Sorry,” I tried again, my hand dropping to my belly to rub away a renewed spasm. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”
Mordechai didn’t respond to that, simply took the folder and set it with the others, most of them still open, while I turned and looked at his shelves to give him a moment to figure out how to yell at me.
I’d memorized these bookcases a long time ago. They were filled with files, dating back fifty years. Back to when he’d been an official rabbi, and before that, a consultant to the Vatican. I suddenly wondered: Who had Mordechai been as a young man? What kind of kid actually grows up to become?—
“Why did you go?”
His words pulled me back around. The rabbi had composed himself. Now he studied me from his customary position, rocked back in his ratty old green suede upholstered office chair, his hands clasped together on his belly. He usually wore long jackets and woven scarves when we visited peoples’ houses. But, like the scrolls, the horn, and the ornamental cases, I knew those clothes were a prop. Something he used to strike equal parts fear and reassurance into both the possessed and the possessor.
Today, however, Mordechai wore his more usual office attire: ragged-edged khakis and a button-down plaid shirt, with a thick green cardigan over top that sort of made him blend in with hischair. His curly gray hair hung a little past cool and well into eccentric, and his face was clean-shaven. That meant he’d gone to see the Klein sisters, I knew. Rabbi Mordechai didn’t shave unless he had to see people. Real people, not me.
But he was waiting for a response, so I sat in my customary armchair, too, fatigue all of a sudden weighing me down.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, surprised at my own honesty. “At first, I thought for sure that we were supposed to meet yesterday. Like, it was completely locked in my head that yesterday was the Klein’s appointment. My phone was dead, you hadn’t texted me anything else that I knew of, so I just—went.”
“You frightened Mrs. Klein.” As usual with Mordechai, there was no judgment, no censure in his words. Somehow, that made me feel even worse, and I squirmed a little in my chair.
“I didn’t mean to.” I leaned forward, and something flickered in Mordechai’s gray eyes. Interest? Curiosity? Surely, he wanted to hear my side of the story too. “Is that what she said? That I scared her? Honestly, I just wanted to help. I was standing right there on her porch and there was all this noise inside the house, andshelooked so scared, and I thought if I could go inside and see what was going on, that maybe I’d be able to?—”
“You shouldn’t have gone in without me.”
Mordechai’s voice had turned slightly harsher, and I sat back again, nervous now. “Well, I was already there. I thought you were inside.”
His eyebrows were the kind that seemed to be constantly sprouting new hairs, most of them dead white. And now those brows drew up in a bushy question mark. “You knew I wasn’t inside.”
“Not at first, I didn’t. I came up the steps and there was all this noise, and it stopped when I banged on the door, and then she answered, and?—”
“And she told you I wasn’t there.”
“That’s not thepoint.” Anger seared through me. How could he not see this? “The point is that even though you weren’t already inside, she was clearly in trouble, or her sister was, and I could help. Iwantedto help. I wanted to ease her pain, her sister’s pain. I don’t see why that’s so wrong. And it’s not like I could stop once I got started. You know that better than anyone.”
Mordechai’s hands had shifted a little higher on his belly as I spoke, but they were still clasped together. He wasn’t a fat man, but he seemed spongier now than when I’d first met him. A little more stooped and tired. He should be welcoming the assistance I was giving him, not constantly putting me off.
Instead, he simply looked at me, and after a moment or two, I felt a sudden easing of my own stress. All the anxiety, pain, and hard-sharp angles were softening like he was soft, rounding under the cadence of his words.
“So, then, tell me, Delia,” he murmured. “How was your first experience confronting evil all alone?”
Chapter
Five
The question seemed curiously weighted, and I tensed, searching for a trap. But Rabbi Mordechai never set out to trap me. That wasn’t his way. He taught by drawing me out, reminding me of what I’d forgotten.
“It was fine.” That was nowhere near accurate. I tried again. “I mean, it was kind of fast, if you want to know the truth. Easy, even. I saw the creature, got its name. Mammon. Thirty minutes, start to finish.”
Mordechai was quiet for a long moment. Too long. When I looked up, I caught him staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Not fear, exactly. Not pity.
Definitely curiosity.
“What?” I asked, suddenly defensive.
“Your eyes,” he said softly.
“What about them?”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a small hand mirror, offering it to me.
I didn’t want to take it. But I did.
