“Your family.”
I glance down at her. “You were digging again.”
“I was researching.”
“That’s a nicer word for it.”
She nudges me lightly and heads toward the kitchen, “I need ice cream and?—”
“Pickles?” I ask while following.
“Eww, no. I was going to say as we talk.”
She opens the freezer and pulls out the container of chocolate hazelnut.
She grabs two spoons and pops the lid off, taking the first bite before handing it to me.
“How did you know my favorite?” I lean against the counter and take a scoop myself.
She pints the spoon toward her belly, “My second craving.”
“What was your first?” I ask.
She grabs a jar of honey and holds it up, then makes grabby hands, and I hand her the carton.
“What’s the honey for?” I ask.
“I was reading something earlier,” she says casually, drizzling a little over the ice cream, and heads toward the couch. “Apparently, honey shows up everywhere in Jewish cooking and tradition.”
My brow lifts slightly, wondering where this is going. Worried she’s found something about the war, a war in which I refuse to look into, not wanting confirmation for the haters that, from time to time, come for me. Worried, she is concerned that our children will have to deal with the same treatment. “And?”
She sits, “And it made something in the records make a lot more sense.” Then she looks up at me. “That’s where your family comes in.” She pats the spot next to her. “Sit?”
I do.
“I followed the records back further than anyone ever bothered to.”
“Should I be worried?”
“No.” She tilts her head to look at me. “Your family hid things.”
I nod once. “From the war?”
Silence stretches between us.
“Jewish roots,” she continues quietly. “Buried under name changes and relocations and paperwork that was meant to erase it.”
For a moment, I am at a loss for words. Surely, they wouldn’t have hidden something like that. Something that would have stopped the name-calling I endured from time to time.
“There’s more,” she adds. “Anna’s family, too.”
I look down at her again. “You did Anna’s lineage?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“Same thing.”
