“My husband’s dead,” she said.

“Long ago?” he asked.

“Yes, Father.”

“Please don’t call me Father,” he asked earnestly.

“What should I call you?”

“Edward,” he said. “Or Ed, if you like, or Ned. Not Eddie, though.” He smiled. “I’d like to talk to you if you have time.”

“Now?”

“Yes. I’ll ride back with you if it’s all right. I think the others are gone and it’s a long walk.”

She led him to the car over a rise covered with crocuses. They were quiet on the drive back. He pointed out his house as they passed it, a big old frame building with a round window in the attic and stained glass over the door. A Yankee house.

“Did your father buy that?” she said.

“My great-­grandfather built it,” he said absently.

He got the fire going in his study and gave her tea and a glass of sherry, then he sat down across from her in a worn chintz easy chair. The books on the walls made the room cozy, wind blew outside, and Rachel thought everything looked normal. She could talk to this man about what a fine woman Willa had been and maybe he’d ask her to bake the cookies for something . . . the Planting Festival . . . and she’d go home, cook dinner for Jacob, watch Quincy. She sipped sherry.

“I met a friend of yours last night,” Ryder said. “Roger Hawkins.”

She was too surprised to say anything.

“He said I could talk to you, only to you, so I’m doing it. He said some crazy things, Mrs. Levy, but I’m supposed to listen and I did. It almost made sense at night, with the wind howling, now—” He stopped and she waited. “It was about your people,” he said.

“What about them?”

“He said that your father-­in-­law and his . . . congregation . . . ah . . .” He stopped again.

“Go on,” she said.

“. . . killed Willa, the boys, some people in Brooklyn, and more in Poland.”

“In Germany,” Rachel corrected.

He stared at her. “You believe it?”

She didn’t answer.

“So did I,” Ryder said. “At least enough to get on my bike, ride to the temple in the middle of the night, and look in the basement window like a sneak thief.”

“Did you see anything?”

“A night light shaped like a pig.” Leah’s little night light. She’d wondered where it was. “And a big wooden box with a curtain over it.”

He saw the look on her face and asked, “What’s in the box, Mrs. Levy?”

“Nothing. Prayer books, jars of herring, shawls. Nothing.”

She jumped up and he caught her arm.

“I have to help you,” he said.

“Do what?”

“The inspector talked about Cabala, mysticism, magic. He said it was bullshit, but I don’t think so. Neither do you, do you?”

She didn’t answer.