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But my hands shook as I laid the cookies out on our paper-covered table portion, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from darting around me as we planned out our strategy. I volunteered to go grab supplies from the communal table mostly so that I could scope out the room: where the bathrooms were if I needed to flee a sudden approach of Mrs. Landskroner; where all the volunteers were stationed.

Seriously, what were the odds that someone from my past would be here?

Probably not that low, honestly. Even New York City, the biggest Jewish community in the United States, could feel pretty small. Everybody knew everybody. I was probably lucky it wasn’t my parents or other relatives popping up here. I might have fainted into my frosting.

Maybe I wasn’t as okay as I thought.

I pushed that disconcerting idea away as Seth and I got to work: we had a contest to win, after all, and I’d be damned if I’d tarnish the good name of my café and its baked goods in front of all these people (no matter that I didn’t bake most of them myself). I was carefully painting a Star of David into a stained glass beauty when I paused, an idea popping into my head. “What do you think about a cookie-decorating station at the festival?”

Seth didn’t pause in his decoration of a menorah cookie. As it turned out, there were only so many humorous things you could do with cookies shaped like that. While I thought turning one into an eight-legged octopus in flagrant defiance of the antisemitic stereotype of the Jew-as-octopus-with-tentacles-all-over-the-world would be both timely and funny, Seth assured me that it would not win the favor of the judges. Which was probably true. “I think it’s a great idea.”

I knew he wasn’t lying because he hadn’t hesitated before telling me my octopus cookie idea was terrible. A lightness filled my chest, one that very nearly distracted me from Mrs. Landskroner’s poisonous presence. “And it shouldn’t be too hard to organize. I can order plain sugar cookies from wherever, and then we just need to make sure we have stuff to decorate them with. Colored frosting, sprinkles, whatever.”

“People will love it.”

“Hopefully, Lorna will.” She’d probably insist on making sure we had candy canes and Santa sprinkles and lots of red and green frosting. “But I’ll deal with that when it comes to it.”

Fortunately, whatever Mrs. Landskroner’s volunteer duties were, they kept her busy for most of the event. I looked up at one point to find an older woman hovering over us, but it was just Bev. “Very nice,” she said, eyeballing my stained glass Star of David in particular, which made me proud. “I never thought Seth’s children would have any artistic talent, but seems there’s hope for them yet.”

Another thing we could deal with when it came to it.

An hour later, I was surveying our cookie spread with pride. Our Star of David, menorah, Judah Maccabee, dreidel, and wild card—a face shape that we’d turned into a scarily realistic latke featuring both applesauce and sour cream (didn’t want to alienate half the judging pool)—were not just finished, they were gorgeous. “If we don’t win this contest, that means it’s definitely been rigged. Just like the rainbow cookie one,” I said, side-eyeing Granny and Gramps’s shakily outlined menorah and splotchy dreidel. I picked up ours to compare, admiring them. “We didn’t even need to sabotage any—”

“Abby!” Mrs. Landskroner appeared in front of us again. The lipstick was still on her teeth. “Are you seeing your parents while you’re in town? I hope you are. I know your mother misses you.”

And that’s when it happened. I dropped my cookies. But I didn’t just drop them: I lunged fruitlessly to try to catch them before they broke, except I missed. And landed on top of our other cookies, palms first and hard.

Our beautiful winning cookies were nothing more than crumbs now. “Shit!” Absurdly, embarrassingly, tears stung the corners of my eyes.

Seth’s shadow fell over me, hovering with concern. “What happened? Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay!” I flung my arm out over the table, narrowly missing whapping Mrs. Landskroner on the boob. “Our cookies are ruined!”

“I wasn’t talking about the cookies. I was talking about you.”

I looked up to find him blurry and indistinct, but you couldn’t mistake the emotion in his eyes.

Pity.

Mrs. Landskroner was saying something about how it was such a shame and our cookies had been so beautiful, but I could barely hear her over the sound of my own stomach heaving. Pity. I didn’t want his pity. I didn’t want anyone’s pity. A headache exploded behind my eyes, threatening to make me vomit.

So I finally listened to my first instincts, and fled.

18

In my childhood synagogue I had my designated fleeing spots for when things got to be too much: the single-stall family restroom; the back corner of the library; the beit midrash. But this was an unfamiliar location. Which was how I wound up in what appeared to be the rabbi’s office. You’d think they would’ve locked it, but no.

I probably should’ve left, but I didn’t want to risk running into Mrs. Landskroner—or anybody else—in the hallway. So I crept past the piles of books on the floor and all the books on the bookshelf—the mark of a good rabbi? Way too many books—and took a seat behind the rabbi’s big scrolled wood desk. He or she was clearly much taller than me, since my feet barely touched the floor from the threadbare rolling chair.

Seth would text me eventually when it was time to go, I assumed. I could lie and tell them I’d had a bathroom emergency. Vomiting or something just as gross that nobody wanted to hear details about. Until then I’d just hang out here. If it weren’t so dark, and I weren’t afraid to turn on a light or use my phone flashlight, I could maybe page through some books. The darkness was good for me right now, though. Better for my eyes than a bright light that would make my headache worse. It had already lessened a little bit just by virtue of getting away here into the dark.

Or away from the cause of the headache. I grimaced. Admitting that to myself was basically admitting that my headaches were caused by…stress? Repressed emotions? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to think about it too hard, because that would mean I really wasn’t processing everything in the healthiest way. Not if it was giving me headaches to the point where Seth might start to wonder if I had a lurking brain tumor or something.

There was just barely enough light filtering in through the blinds behind me to survey all the photos on the rabbi’s desk. A wedding photo of a bride and groom in puffy ultra-nineties fashion, their smiles tame but their eyes sparkling. Photos of plump babies and children hugging each other. Pictures of the parents and children at a water park, at a high school graduation, all beaming together with the Roman Colosseum in the background. A brightly colored, modern photo of a new baby, showing that the cycle had started all over again.

Something ugly twisted in my stomach. My fists balled in my lap. If I had a little bit less self-control, I’d have picked up one of those photos and hurled it at the wall, felt a mean sort of glee as the glass and the frame shattered all around it.

The door creaked open. I sat up very straight in the chair, rehearsing what I was going to say in my head. Sorry, I know I shouldn’t be here. I got turned around. I needed a minute to rest in the dark so that this migraine wouldn’t get any worse. I’ll go now. Sorry.