While she had worn a hearing aid for years, somehow it wasn’t working as well anymore. When people spoke to her, she sometimes had to pretend, half the time guessing when she answered. And sometimes she got it terribly wrong. She could tell as people smiled at each other at her answer in a mocking way and repeated the question. She had to go back to the ear doctor. But she was putting it off. What if … what if nothing could be done anymore, and she’d be deaf as well as half-blind? Oh, it was no fun to grow old! Thank God Yaakov had found a young woman to care for her grandchildren. To love them. She tightened her lips. Let anyone say a word against her Leah-le. Just let them.

“And Shaindele, her friends, the girls from her school, they also heard the rumors? They are teasing her again like before?”

Leah felt her cheeks grow warm. She hadn’t even considered that! How awful if it was true! “She hasn’t said anything. At least not to me.” Their relationship was so much better now, but still tentative—as it was between any adult and teenager—the ups and downs rapid and unpredictable. What if she ran to Yaakov with the gossip like before? That’s all she needed!

At least it isn’t as bad as last year, Shaindele thought. Those horrible days! The whispering behind hands, the giggles, the side glances, the silences when she entered the classroom that filled her heart with apprehension and dread. This time, only a few of the girls had even mentioned it, dafka the nice ones. A few of her friends had come to her privately, asking straight out about the rumors flying around. They’d been honest and respectful.

And even though this was exactly the kind of disaster she’d been dreading ever since her father walked down the aisle, now that it had actually happened, she found herself strangely indifferent. So much had happened to her over the last two years!

She’d experienced unfathomable grief, searing hatred, jealousy, bitterness, and finally a painful push into adulthood and maturity. There were things she understood now that even a few months before she had not. For example, the fact that human beings were imperfect and not all tragedies could be prevented or even correctly assigned to an individual perpetrator for absolute blame. She understood, too, that many of her schoolmates and others around her, untempered by the kind of tragedy that had shaped her young life, were simply silly children whose opinions on most subjects didn’t matter. Their simplistic view of life—to which she had always subscribed—dividing people into saints and sinners, “good” families deserving of the best shidduchim and “unworthy” families whose background, finances, and history relegated them to Grade B or even Grade C shidduch prospects, was simply ridiculous.