She bustled through the apartment with a familiarity and ease that stunned him. How did she know where everything was when most of it was still a mystery even to him? Then he remembered: the shiva.

“I’ll bring you a cup of tea, Rav?” she called to him.

He followed her into the kitchen. “Only if you make two cups,” he answered graciously. A woman in his kitchen. The smell of freshly baked cakes. Something in his heart leaped up.

Evenings were the worst. The big house so quiet with only his own breathing, the shuffle of his slippers from living room to study, the slight crackle of the well-worn pages of his beloved sacred texts. It had grown familiar to him like the deformed and ugly healing of a wound that you had no choice but to accept. And now, her voice, a woman’s voice, comforting, bringing succor and sweetness into the sour loneliness to which he was never, ever going to become reconciled.

“I’m happy to have a cup, too.” She opened the cupboards, somehow knowing exactly where everything was, which was fortunate because he would not have been able to tell her. Setting two cups and saucers on the counter, she switched on the kettle.

“The tea?”

“I’m not sure.” He shrugged, feeling a bit foolish. But the kitchen was like a rented hotel room in a foreign country, an unexplored space.

“Maybe here?” She nodded, laughing, holding up a large ceramic jar with the word tea written in gothic letters in bright red. “Please, Rav, go sit in the dining room. I’ll bring it to you.”

“We could sit here in the kitchen; it’ll be easier for you,” he suggested, suddenly wanting to be a good host.

“If you want. But I always like to eat in the dining room. It makes the food taste better,” she answered honestly, shutting off the screaming kettle and pouring out the hot liquid. She opened up a tea bag. It was the kind that made the water dark brown in seconds. “I’ll use one bag for both?” she asked. “They are so strong.”

“Yes, that is what my wife used to do,” he murmured, remembering.

“And how much sugar? Or do you not take? Diabetes?”

“No, thank HaShem. Nothing like that. But the rugelach will be sweet enough.”

They sat down across from each other at the long, elegant dining room table, the steam rising from the tea fogging their glasses. The cakes were piled up on a plate between them. But he made no move. She got up suddenly and brought two plates back to the table, placing one rugelach on each. Of course, she couldn’t expect him to reach out for one! What if she reached out at the same time! Their fingers might touch!