She saw the light in the basement and another light on the first floor. She had to find out what that was, but she took Leah home first. It was after midnight and Levy still wasn’t home. She put Leah to bed and went down to the kitchen. She’d forgotten to leave him supper and he’d made his own. There was an empty tuna fish can in the garbage and the mayonnaise was still on the counter. She looked at the remains of the meager meal and felt a pang of guilt in spite of everything. It came to her that she might never see him again after tomorrow but the thought was unbearable and she pushed it away.

She heard him at the front door and she turned off the light and stayed where she was in the dark. He went upstairs and into Leah’s room. She heard the chair scrape overhead and she knew he was sitting alone, watching his granddaughter sleep. He went to the bathroom, then to his own room. His door closed and she waited until it was quiet. Then she took her shoes off, carried them to the front door, and left the house. Outside, she put them back on and hurried up the street toward town.

From the street the first floor of the shul looked dark now, but when she got up on the porch and looked in the window, she saw the light. It was a tensor lamp sitting on a chair, and in the circle of light it threw, she saw Isaac Luria in profile reading. A radio was next to him and she heard singing. The Magic Flute.

Levy had just come home and Luria was there alone listening to Mozart in the middle of the night. She backed away from the window and walked quietly down the front steps. They came here in shifts, she realized, to guard whatever was in the basement. One of them would be there tomorrow night, too; Walinsky, Dworkin, Fineman . . . eight old men, dividing up the hours of the night. She went home to call Hawkins.

She bought rope and wide adhesive like Hawkins told her to. She cleaned the house top to bottom and boiled chicken with a lot of onions and celery the way Levy liked it. It was just starting to get dark when she finished and she and Leah left the house and walked slowly along the lane. They passed Allan’s house, which looked empty, then Willa’s. They’d fixed the front door and boarded up two of the downstairs windows. It was already on the market, but she was sure no one would want to live there for months or years.

They turned in at Golda’s. Rachel helped Leah up the steps and she rang the bell.