Before I knew it, the tree was finished. I held it up. It looked amazing. Oren was so right—the picture had definitely needed a tree.

“We make a good team,” I said.

“Hey, kids,” Dad said, wandering into the room. He was still in his fleece pajama pants and a T-shirt. “What are you up to?”

“I’m showing Oren my quilling,” I said as I proudly pointed at my project. “He helped me put in the tree.”

“Great job, you two,” Dad said as he leaned over to look more closely. “That’s really great. It almost looks like a tree of life.”

“Huh,” I said, tilting my head to really look at the tree. He was right. It did resemble the silver pendant Mom sometimes wore, which was a tree with a rounded canopy of individual leaves. It represented wisdom and the Torah, or something like that. I’d always thought it was pretty. Maybe I’d made my tree like her necklace without even realizing it.

Dad had opened his mouth to say something else when the phone rang. He and I both went still, looking at each other. Oren continued assembling a pile of paper strips.

Mom answered the phone in the kitchen. “Yes, Syd. Of course,” she said in her serious voice. “I’ll send Ben to… oh…where? Yes. We’ll get her transferred into our care right away.”

Someone had died.

Without another word, Dad left the room.

I glanced at Oren, but he was still sorting papers. If he knew what was happening, he didn’t let on. A moment later he looked up at me. He pointed toward the tree and then at the green and brown papers in front of him.

“You think it needs more?” I asked. “Another tree?”

He shook his head and picked up his phone.

I want to make one for my parents. A memorial tree.

“Like a tree of life,” I said.

My name means tree.

Whoa. “Really? That’s cool.”

Oren looked around the room. His eyes landed on the stack of old, worn-out prayer books piled on top of the hutch that held our good dishes. Rabbi Alisha had brought them over the day before for Dad to take to the cemetery and bury.

Oren got up out of his chair and went over to the books, opening one up. The cover was so worn out, it nearly came off. He flipped through the pages before he turned back toward me and pointed. I was pretty sure he was saying, “What’s up with these?”

I explained how you can’t just throw out books with God’s name in them, that they were waiting to be buried.

He returned to the table and picked up his phone.

Can we use them? They’d look cool in a tree trunk.

Huh. I’d never thought of that. I looked over at the books. They were just going to the cemetery to get buried because they were too worn out to use, so why not?

But I wanted to be sure. “We’d better ask my parents first,” I said.