The phone call that put her into action had come yesterday. There was a time long ago—three years to be exact—when she would have gone through these same motions with breathless anticipation. Evita had married when she was eighteen, a consignment arranged by an ancient matchmaker, approved by her rabbi, and encouraged by virtually everyone. Her husband, sixteen years her senior, had in the beginning been wealthy, fit, and relatively kind. All this faded soon after he lost his job at the export bank. The drinking came first, followed by surliness and, when it came to her, disinterest. She tried to meet him halfway for a time, to mend their relationship. He’d responded with more drinking and ill moods that bordered on psychosis. She could today think of only two positives in their relationship—that they had not manufactured children, and that he had not sought a mistress. The later was a given, actually, as he’d not been able to perform in years, even with the colorful pills. Evita had fallen increasingly despondent, sensing she was doomed to a life of misery from which there was no escape. Then, one magnificent day, she had found salvation. His name was Saud.

The first time she saw him was at a showing for promising young artists at the Ashdod Museum of Art. He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. He worked in stone, yet Evita thought this a problematic medium for a man whose chiseled features paled anything he might create. His work was good, as far as she knew, and critics raved about his potential. But for a young Palestinian boy from Jibaliya, potential meant little. To his credit, Saud never wavered. He worked day after day, his strong hands chipping and smoothing, his keen brown eyes appraising his creations with an intensity that could not have been bettered by Da Vinci or Michelangelo. And those sharp eyes held Evita in the same way, running brazenly over her body as if contemplating a work of art. That was how Saud made her feel—like a masterpiece.

They chatted at the reception that first day, and went for coffee afterward. A lunch two days later ran three hours, both of them lingering shamelessly. The next week she offered to pose naked for him, a project that took twice as long as it should have for predictable reasons, and the product of which was destroyed when knocked from its stand during a particularly enthusiastic sitting. For six months and two days, Evita Levine was happier than she had ever been. She and Saud made plans as best a married Israeli woman and a poor Palestinian sculptor could. In hopeful moments they imagined divorce and artistic discovery, and in the rest they plotted desperate trysts in attic flats.

Then had come the airstrike.