She pressed her palm down, felt ridges in the parchment and tried to think about the women whose stories were on the scroll . . . Eve, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Esther, and poor Hagar. But they didn’t mean anything to her and all she could think of was Lilith and her snake. She redressed the scroll in its cover and plaque. Then she put it back into the ark and closed it.

“We have no more time,” Garfield called.

She came down from the platform and went up the aisle.

“It’s defiled now,” Walinsky said to her back. “We can never use it again. What a waste.”

She didn’t answer.

“A waste!” he called after them as they left the sanctuary and went to the top of the basement stairs. Then the old man went back to yelling, “Help, help—Jacob, help!” The news was over and the dance music came back on the radio. They went down the stairs single file; Hawkins held the flashlight. At the bottom, they paused in the entryway, looked at each other, then went into the basement.

It was deep and the ceiling was high. There was paneling on the walls and linoleum on the floor, but Rachel knew the house was old and she was sure that behind the paneling there’d be a stone foundation that had been laid a hundred years ago. She expected the room to be damp, but it was warm and dry and the floor was clean. There were six support posts painted brown to match the paneling, and between them, at the far end of the room away from the door, was the long wooden box covered with fabric hung from cafe-­curtain rings. The little pig night light was on a step stool next to the box. When Rachel saw the light, she thought Walinsky was right. Why would a clay man need a night light? Then she realized that the light wasn’t for whatever was in the box, but for anyone who had to come down there, because no one would want to be alone in the dark with it, even for a second. Hawkins started to cross the basement to the box, but Garfield said, “Don’t pull the curtain yet. Don’t make it any harder.”

Rachel looked at the curtain. It didn’t move and she had the same feeling she knew Hawkins had now—that when they pulled that curtain, they’d find the prayer books, paper plates, and some bottles of wine after all.