“You’re not involving me, Daddy, I’m involving me.” She looked at Donatti. She knew all about him, although she had always thought of him as older when in fact she knew that he was younger than she. He seemed older. Maybe it was the white hair. Maybe it was the panic on his face. Her eyes went to the children’s faces. She walked over to them and knelt down. “I’m Cindy. I’m your brother’s foster sister. As soon as Gabe comes back, I’ll give him a call and we’ll work this out together, okay?”

Rina said, “Don’t you think you should ask Koby about this?”

“Koby will say yes.” She stood up. “He knows what it’s like to be a refugee.”

At that moment, her two identical sons and her husband walked into the living room. They were dripping in sweat. Koby said, “It was a good game, Grandpa. You should have—” He stopped talking and looked at the two kids. The girl was a shade lighter than his own skin tone; the boy was darker, like him, both of them with straight black hair. They looked Indian. Thinking that, he realized that they were probably Gabe’s siblings. “Hello there.”

To her husband, Cindy said, “These are Gabe’s brother and sister. Their mother is missing. I offered to watch them until Daddy and Gabe’s father can figure out what is going on. Is that okay?”

“Do you mean Daddy me or Daddy your father?”

“Daddy my father.”

“Sure, we can watch them.” Koby turned to Decker. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Their mother is gone … as in vanished,” Decker answered. “We’re trying to figure out whether it’s a voluntary or involuntary disappearance.”

Within moments, the other Decker children began to pile into the house: Sammy and Rachel with their two children, Hannah and Rafi with their baby, and Jacob and Ilana. They all stopped in their tracks and stared at the strangers in their parents’ living room. Jacob felt the tension in the room and said, “What’s going on?”

Koby said, “These are Gabe’s siblings, and this is Gabe’s father, as if you couldn’t tell by looking at him.”

Donatti introduced himself and the children by name. “Their mother is missing. I need someone to watch them until I know what happened to her. Gabe is out of the country. Furthermore, I don’t want to tell him until I know where she is.”

Koby turned to Donatti. “Don’t they have a father?”

“He’s in India,” Decker said.

Donatti said, “I just brought the boy back from there to be reunited with his mom. I don’t want to contact Devek just yet. And where I live … it’s not appropriate for them to be there without their mother.”

Cindy said, “We all know all about you.”