“I do need to explain because I’m afraid I’ve done you a disservice all these years, keeping it inside. Every year on Passover, at the Seder, I dip my celery into the salt water. We all do. Do you know why we do that?”

Joey grasped for an answer, but nothing. What she remembered of once-a-week Hebrew school was the sprinkle cookies they served during break. “Not really.”

“We do it to remember the tears of our ancestors. So every year, I dip my celery into salt water, and I remember them. The only family I knew, before there was all of you. It’s not fair to say it’s restricted to Passover. My cells remember them, in every moment.” G bit her lip. “But herein lies the business of living.”

It felt an overwhelming amount for Joey to assimilate, like the entire ocean queuing up to funnel through a very thin hose. “I wish there was something I could say to make things better, G, but there isn’t, is there?”

“No,” said her grandmother. “No, there isn’t. But there’s one thing you can do for me.”

“Anything, G.”

“Will you hold my hand?”

Her grandmother lifted her hand from beneath her pillow, and Joey reached for it. It was veiny and fragile and soft, and Joey sat there in the dark for a very long time, holding her grandmother’s hand.

*  *  *

Joey met an unusually restrained Bea in G’s kitchen. Bea wore fitness leggings and a black T-shirt. Her face was scrubbed bare. They sat at the table with a half-eaten bowl of cherries, the pits sprinkled among the whole cherries—a melancholy indicator of solo living.

“I thought you should see it,” said Joey. “She’s not doing well.”

“Yes. I can imagine.” Bea tapped her nails one at a time on the glass table. “Do you think she’ll want to see me?”

“Of course she’ll want to see you. You’re her favorite person on earth.”

At that, Bea winced. “She called you, though, not me. Did you see the part in the messages? I met Milos all that time ago.”

“Yeah, what was that about?”

“His daughter was translating, remember? At that reunion? He said he loved my mother. He said to give her his information. I got the gist then. Here was her ex-lover, not Jewish, and she’d sabotaged my relationship with Rand. Or so I thought. I found it to be the ultimate act of hypocrisy. I was just so…angry at her. So incredibly angry.”

“So when Grandfather died—”