He nodded, fear in his heart, dreading it, but grateful to have her honesty and her wisdom. Another woman might have taken advantage of his obvious attempt at placation and let it slide, instead of seeing it for what it was: a desperate and perhaps a bit cowardly attempt to salvage something useful and whole from a disastrous wreck.

Mordechai Shalom was beginning to yawn.

“Better lay him down,” she told Yaakov, who bore him into his bedroom and tucked him in with a kiss.

But Chasya wasn’t going anywhere, Leah realized. The child’s eyes were bright, and a nervous vivacity informed all her movements.

“I learned how to say a new bracha,” Chasya announced, climbing up into her father’s lap as he sat down at the dining room table, settling in comfortably even though she’d already had her dinner hours ago. Leah, who was attached to the child body and soul, understood that her sharp, sensitive little mind had absorbed all the disharmony in the house with growing agitation. Let her sit in her father’s arms, she thought wisely.

“I thought you knew them all already!” Yaakov teased her. “So what new thing did you find to make a blessing over?”

“A tree. With flowers on it!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “You say, ‘Blessed are You, God, our God, King of the universe, Who left nothing lacking in His world, and created within it good creatures and good trees with which He gives pleasure to people,’” she recited in Hebrew, her tongue tripping a little over the unfamiliar words.

Yaakov looked over her head, exchanging a small smile of quiet pride with Leah. He bent his head forward, lowering it so that his eyes were level with the child’s. “And what did you see that made you want to say this bracha, Chasya?”

“An almond tree. It was all white, like a bride!”

Yaakov laughed, kissing the top of her little head.

My Yaakov, Leah thought, feeling the moisture gather in her eyes.

“Such a thing there is in Boro Park?” he asked.

Leah smiled, shaking her head. “I know, right? But there’s a private house next to her school with a garden in the back that she can see from her classroom window. Chasya has apparently been checking out this tree every day. Yesterday, it finally blossomed. She was so excited, she started jumping up and down. Until her teacher figured out what was going on…” She shook her head with mock horror. “But when Chasya pointed out the tree, the teacher decided to use it for educational purposes.”

Her mind drifted back to California, to Santa Clara, where she had gone to university. It would be filled with budding trees this time of year. And lawns would be like carpets, the scent of mown grass perfuming the air. Chasya would love it there.