He felt a shiver of discomfort go down his spine. ‘I don’t … follow the faith, these days.’
If Rushi was surprised, she kept it well hidden. ‘Well, I’m sure your mother just loves that. Your Uncle Israel, too.’ She paused. ‘He’s still living off the grid, is he?’
Cohen nodded. ‘Yeah.’
Rushi nodded. ‘Still Jewish, though?’
Cohen shrugged. ‘You talk about it like it’s actually a choice.’
Rushi shrugged right back. ‘Why not? You made it one, by your own account.’ She sighed. ‘I’d like to see Israel again, one of these days. After he had his hand blown off in Korea, everyone said he’d cracked, your mother included.’ Abruptly, Rushi grinned. ‘But I like cracked people. Cracks mean you can see all the interesting things people normally keep hidden underneath.’ She glanced out the window, taking in the heavy sleet falling to the ground. ‘You should stay for a while. Drink your black coffee and warm up a little. Your mother will never forgive me if I let her boy go out into all that cold without a hot drink in his belly.’
Suddenly, Cohen was determined to have Rushi think well of him. Even if only a little.
‘I’ll call again,’ he suggested. ‘I have a day free next Tuesday. I’ll call in and we can catch up.’
He tried not to think of River, of yellow gingham and rainbow ribbons. He cleared his mind of apple-like cheeks and a warm smile.
But Rushi shook her head. ‘Don’t. I told you already, she’s not for you. And there’s no point in your coming all this way to see me. It’s just as you said, you aren’t a child any more. I’m your mother’s friend, not yours.’
‘Oh.’
Abruptly, Rushi’s face softened. ‘Besides, I’m not even here on Tuesdays. That’s the day I teach at the Hanyu Institute over in the city.’
Cohen nodded.
‘Stay and have that coffee,’ Rushi told him. ‘And give your mother a hug from me when you next see her.’ Suddenly she stopped, spinning on her heel with a deftness that surprised him. ‘No, wait. On second thoughts, don’t do that. Just give her a hug, but don’t tell her it’s from me. She needs more hugs, that mother of yours. And I think one from you might make her year.’
He watched as she walked away.That’s it then, he thought bitterly.Just another miserable meeting in the miserable life of Cohen Ford.
He shouldn’t be surprised.
He shouldn’t feel bitter.
But he did.
He was still mulling silently, scowling at the table, when a cup of black coffee, dark and steaming, was pushed towards him. He looked up and straight into the meadow-like eyes of River. Green flecks seemed to move in a field of brown, and Cohen felt his breath catch in his throat.
She nudged the coffee towards him again, but more than that, she also pushed a pastel-pink cup, brimming with strawberry ice cream, into his hand.
He stared at it for a moment, a lump in his throat, before opening his mouth to protest, to tell River that he was too old for ice cream, too old for pastel-pink and too jaded for even the smallest of small pleasures. But he closed it just as suddenly, reminding himself that she couldn’t hear. That his protests were useless. That he couldn’t ever hope to explain to her why he would turn down her small gift.
And so, he simply looked once more into her lovely eyes and smiled.
She smiled back.
He left the coffee.
He ate the strawberry ice cream.
And he knew that next Tuesday, whatever Rushi might have told him, he was coming back here again.
Chapter Two
Apple
A few weeks after his father died, and just a few months after Christine left him for another man – one who was more ‘her type’, more of a ‘go-getter’ and just ‘better’ than Cohen, apparently – Cohen did something he’d been thinking about for years.
He hired a therapist.
