Yesterday, Shira came home from school for the first time since getting better. She burst through the door and announced, “The teacher said Mitzpe was the best place in the world to see stars!” She went on and on about it the whole afternoon, and Nelly and I suggested that all three of us go out that evening to the top of the red hill with head flashlights and the old telescope. Shira got all excited, took a detailed list of the constellations she wanted to see, and demanded we stay out until we found Orion and the Great Bear. Nelly and I couldn’t spot anything so we made up the Blue Goose and the Little Lamp and the Anthill of the North. The whole way down we kept telling her it was really weird she didn’t see them, and Nelly whispered in my ear that it would take the girl at least three more years to realize there wasn’t actually a constellation called Aunt Leah’s Hip.

When we got home Shira jumped up and down on her bed all fired up, until she exhausted herself and collapsed onto the mattress. Nelly went to take a shower and I stayed with Shira, watching her yawn nonstop.

“Shirush, are you sure you don’t remember anything from your time at the hospital?” I asked her.

“I already said I don’t!” she yelled, saying I had already asked her a hundred times.

“Yes, I know, it’s just that your mom and I had a weird thought,” I said, gently stroking her face.

“What thought?” she asked and closed her eyes, stretching her small arms. I told her that because she was such a special girl, we thought maybe she had found a way to live inside her dreams; to spend some time there, exploring all the different worlds inside her head. Shira opened one gray eye, looked at me and gave a small, mischievous smile. She didn’t say anything, and I felt that maybe I had finally caught her. That maybe even now, she was still playing us. Before I managed to ask her anything else, Shira put her head on my shoulder, nestled against me for a few moments, and fell asleep.

The Jerusalem Beach

THEY WENT LOOKING FOR HER first memory, snow on the beach in Jerusalem. Tomorrow he would turn her in, but at that moment they were still riding the 480 bus together, second seat from the back. Lilian had fallen asleep, and Sammy was looking out the window, stroking his frayed leather satchel. There was only one thing he could say with absolute certainty—the world had changed since he last went out in it. She hadn’t left their small apartment in Ramat Gan for years, and he wouldn’t leave without her. He gazed at the forested hills along the way, remembered them more jagged, and told himself that time ate into everything.