Yaakov noticed her preoccupation. He was attuned to her now with a kind of hypersensitivity to compensate, he realized, for those secret, shameful thoughts he had harbored against her. What was she really thinking about? And how had it come to pass that he didn’t know and was afraid to ask her?

Leah suddenly noticed him staring at her. She got up abruptly. “I’ll go get the soup.”

As she served the meal, she thought, I should be thrilled and grateful that he has come home with such a different attitude! And part of her was. But another place in her heart that was more obstinate and harder to reach held back. Today he had obviously gotten some mussar from Rav Alter. But what of tomorrow? How would they navigate raising these children when there was such an enormous gap between them of background and culture?

Someone making a video of this meal from a drone hovering above their heads, she thought, would have seen a relaxed, normal family, sharing delicious food, asking each other about their day, laughing at the little girl who sat ensconced in her father’s arms making jokes and preening in the adoration of her family. They would not have noticed either the tenseness in the eyes of the eldest daughter, or how she merely pushed the food around in her plate, eating almost nothing; nor the overly solicitous way the young wife and mother made sure to keep all the serving platters filled and the water pitcher replenished; nor even the strongest hint of all that something was amiss from the husband and father, who hardly stopped talking and joking and smiling, but with a smile that stayed captured at his lips, never rising to his eyes.

After the dishes were cleared away and Chasya had been reluctantly tucked into bed and Shaindele had wished them both good night, they sat back down at the newly scrubbed dining room table across from each other. The sofa—the only other place they could sit together aside from their bed—seemed too intimate a space somehow for the kind of conversation they needed to have, an exchange that despite all their good intentions would inevitably pitch them against each other harshly. It was the first time she had felt so alienated from him during the precious time they were allowed to be together. What a waste! she thought, heartsick.

“Yaakov, I spoke to Shaindele about what happened.”

He lifted his head alertly. “And what did she tell you?”

She sighed. How to say this to him without breaking his heart? “I think we both haven’t realized how much her mother’s death has damaged her.”

“Damaged?” His heart lurched at the word, which intuitively he knew was the correct one. It terrified him.

“Yes. She is having all kinds of doubts.”

“About what?”