He knew the Ten Commandments were inside the gold cylinder, but he didn’t know why people wore it. Maybe for protection, and in spite of what he’d said to Ryder, and what he’d always believed, it suddenly didn’t seem so silly.

He pulled over, parked in front of the store, and went in. The man behind the counter was old; he didn’t have a beard, but he wore a yarmulke. When he saw Hawkins, his old pale skin whitened even more. Hawkins was big and black; he looked wild, and the old man had been held up twice in the past three years. He normally kept the door locked, but he was old and he’d forgotten to lock it after the last customer. He fought his fear and tried to resign himself. He waited while Hawkins looked into the floor case and into the glass cases on the wall. Then he pointed to a small gold mazuzah hanging from a thin chain. The old man was too frightened or he’d have asked Hawkins what he could possibly want with a mazuzah.

“How much is this one?” Hawkins asked, and the old man went through the motions. He took out his black velvet cushion and displayed the mazuzah on it. It was marked eighty, the old man calculated as if they were really going to have a sale here.

“You can have it for sixty,” he said.

“With the chain?” Hawkins asked.

The old man considered. “That’s a good price.”

“I know . . .”

“You’ll pay the tax?”

Hawkins nodded and they made the deal. Now the old man hummed, the color came back into his face; he put the mazuzah in a velvet box and they said good-­bye. It was seven o’clock; with good steady driving, and no traffic jams, Hawkins thought he could be in Laurel by nine.

Jacob talked, made jokes, played with Leah, but Rachel stood at the sink with her back to him. No matter how hard he tried to engage her, she’d gone to Willa’s funeral today and she couldn’t look at him. He stopped talking and she concentrated on rinsing dishes for the washer. Levy’s chair scraped and she heard him cross the kitchen to the back door. The door closed, and she saw him walking across the yard toward the woods. It was chilly out, he was in his shirt-­sleeves, and she had to stop herself from calling him to come back for his jacket. He turned and looked back at the house. The sun was still setting; his figure cast a long shadow on the grass, and she thought of the shadow on the wall in Prague, of ugly cobbled streets and frightened people behind blank windows.

The wind went inside Levy’s clothes, his skin pimpled, but he stood still and watched his daughter-­in-­law through the window.