Noa found the car keys in the pocket of yesterday’s shorts and headed outside. There had been a heat wave for over a week and the car was a furnace, but she didn’t have time to wait for it to cool, and threw an old towel down on the seat so that it wouldn’t burn the back of her thighs. Old Mr. Frankel, the neighbor, was standing on his dry front lawn in a rumpled robe. The Frankels’ house was a replica of theirs, having been built by the same developer. When Noa was little, Mrs. Frankel would sometimes invite her in and give her cookies in her dining room, which was the same as their dining room, only filled with glass furniture and her collection of kitsch Judaica. Mrs. Frankel was from Queens, and was as much of the new world as Mr. Frankel was of the old, having fled Europe with his parents during the war. Dark photographs of Mr. Frankel’s dead hung in the hall that led to the bathroom. But slowly, over the years, the stand of bamboo that bordered their backyards had grown so thick that there was no longer any passage through, and Noa grew older and stopped visiting. Occasionally Leonard would go over to fix something for the Frankels, or sort out a bank letter Mr. Frankel didn’t understand. A few months ago Mrs. Frankel had had a stroke in her sleep and died. Leonard, Monica, and Noa had walked over for the shiva, and as they stepped inside the Frankels’ house, its long-forgotten smell came back to her. Later, Leonard told them that Mr. Frankel had taken him aside. Alone in the bedroom where two nights earlier his wife had passed away, he’d told Leonard that he’d buried something in the garden and needed to dig it up. At first Mr. Frankel had not wanted to reveal what needed exhuming, but when he saw that he would not be able to engage Leonard’s expertise without divulging the truth, he opened the top drawer of a dresser and handed him a carefully folded receipt. It was for a hundred and fifty gold Krugerrands, purchased in 1973. For more than forty years the coins had lain at the bottom of the garden, sealed in two Maxwell coffee cans and wrapped in Saran. Only he had forgotten precisely where. But why? Leonard had asked. Why had he buried them in the first place? Mr. Frankel had thrown up his sun-spotted hands. “In case” was all he would say, and nothing more. Now Noa wondered whether Leonard had ever helped Mr. Frankel to locate the gold. She would have liked to stop to ask Mr. Frankel, but she was already late.

She’d driven to the end of the street before remembering the rabbi, and paused with her hand on the gearshift, deliberating. Then she reversed back down the street, jogged back into the kitchen, and came out again with the envelope from the State Supreme Court. Clutching it to her chest, Noa called to Mr. Frankel, who was looking up at the bright sky. Noa looked up, too, and saw a helicopter hanging above, churning the smoggy air.