Everything in their small Orthodox Jewish community was operated on spit and prayer. The primary school had originally been a thirty-year-old medical building. A step away from being demolished, then someone had stepped in at the last moment with a down payment. The architect—the brother of a member of the shul—had managed to join all the suites under a common ceiling. The classrooms weren’t much bigger than closets, but it was home. At least one of the docs had had the courtesy to leave a skeleton behind for the science lab—their most up-to-date prop. There had been a to do about keeping the bones. Although the body was plastic, the head had once belonged to a genuine human being. In the end, the more modern outvoted the less modern, and Mr. Skeleton stayed.

Hannah came running out of the gate. “Daddddeeeeee!”

“Hannah Rosieeeeee!” Decker answered back, picking the seven-year-old up in his arms. “How was school?”

“Great! How many bad guys did you catch today?”

“A zillion billion.”

“Yes!” Hannah’s feet kicked the air. She squirmed her way down until she was standing on her own power. “Where’s Eema?”

“She’s busy.”

“Is she at the shul?”

Decker looked at her. “Uh, yeah, she is.” He bent down and looked his daughter in the eye. “What do you know about the shul?”

“The teachers told us that a bad man made it messy.” Her brow was knitted in sorrow and fear. “Someone who doesn’t like the Jewish people. Is he going to hurt us, Daddy? Like that bad man who shot the kids at the center?”

“No, honey. No one is going to get hurt. It’s all under control.”

“Did you catch the bad man, Daddy?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m scared. Why is Eema there?”

“To clean up the mess, that’s all.”

“But no one got shot?”

“No, honey, no one got shot.” What a world! “Let’s go, Hannah. Cartoons are waiting.”

Hannah was quiet on the ride home. Decker tried conversation, but the little girl didn’t respond. Four blocks before home, she started talking, although it had nothing to do with the shul. It was a diatribe about how Moshe always took her pencils…just grabbed them from her hand without even asking!

“That’s very rude,” Decker concurred.

“He never even once asked,” she said in outrage. “And…he never said thank you.”

“Very rude.” Decker parked the car in the driveway, helping his daughter out of the car. Then he took out Hannah’s backpack, which must have weighed twenty pounds. “How do you carry this?”

“On my back.”

“No. I mean it’s so heavy!”

“Yes, it is,” Hannah agreed. “Sometimes I use the wheels. Can I have Mike and Ike for snack?”

“No candy before dinner. How about milk and cookies?”

“I don’t like cookies. How about milk and Mike and Ike?”

Decker was too tired to argue. “Sure.”