She was, after all was said and done, and as much as he believed in her and loved her and trusted her, a baalas teshuva. She had grown up in a different world, the debased world that he and his whole community invested everything in keeping at bay like a dangerous plague, sheltering the purity of their children from its toxic influence. And here, he had invited a person who had been sick with it into his home! Had been sick and sought help and recovered, he chastised himself, ashamed. He hung his head. But while Leah’s encounter with the disease of secular life might have given her antibodies and immunity, perhaps it had also seriously clouded her judgment. Just look at her reaction to Shaindele’s deceit! As if it were some little, minor problem all teenagers go through, like a bad grade on a test or a pair of stockings in the wrong shade! Imagine! And perhaps in her world—that is to say what was once her world, he chided himself—it was. But not in his. In his world, it was a complete catastrophe. How didn’t she understand that if it got out, his daughter would be ruined: expelled, prevented from graduating with her class, and forever barred from fulfilling her dream of becoming a teacher like her mameh? More, that she would be blackballed by the matchmakers!

Even worse, perhaps, her brothers—those blameless, pious, studious young men far away with their aunt and uncle in Baltimore, innocent of any connection to their sister’s waywardness—might also find themselves cut off. If the word spread, no matchmaker in good conscience would be able to offer them the daughters of men willing and able to support them through years of kollel study, men who asked only that their future sons-in-law be serious scholars from impeccable families.

He pinched his forehead, closing his eyes. How had it all come to this? And what was he going to do about it?

It wasn’t Leah, he finally understood as he pondered this problem with the sincere honesty and self-reflection that had guided his whole life. It was him, this new life, he thought, looking around at the office with its six-foot-high cubicles and friendly, bareheaded coworkers, a place where strange women wore sweaters and skirts that made him blush.