Everything took longer in Juneau, was the saying, and so David was particularly surprised to get a call on the first Monday of October about the arrival of a flight bringing all of his requested materials. The ark. The scrolls. The large mounted menorah. A dozen bound copies of the Talmud. Some songbooks for the cantors. David and his wife, Ruth, piled into their SUV—armored, because they couldn’t be too careful—and Ruth drove them to the private airfield across the street from Juneau’s tiny airport, arriving just as the Gulfstream was landing. After taxiing for a few minutes, the plane came to a stop, the stairs dropped, and Special Agent Kristy Levine stepped out and disappeared into the private terminal.
“You didn’t tell me she’d be here,” Ruth said.
“I didn’t know,” David said, though of course he had some notion.
“I can’t bear to speak to her,” Ruth said.
“I know,” David said. He unbuckled his seat belt and got out. “I’ll be just a minute.”
DAVID FOUND KRISTY IN THE COFFEE SHOP, SITTING AT A SMALL TABLE, eating a hot dog and drinking a cup of tea. She had already removed a down jacket and a sweater, a pair of gloves, and a wool hat. Still bald, with a small duffel bag on the seat beside her.
“It’s freezing here,” she said to David, as if they were already in the middle of a conversation.
“It’s 40 today,” David said as he sat down across from her. “I’m told that’s practically summer.”
“It’s like Boca,” she said. “Did you know that before the United States entered World War II, there was a proposal to send Jewish refugees here? Not here, specifically, but shittier towns, in fact.” Kristy shook her head. “FDR scuttled it. Who knows how many Jews could have been saved? I think about that sometimes. What a different world we’d be living in today.”
“You can’t fixate on things like that,” David said.
“Yeah, well,” Special Agent Levine said, “I’ve been doing some reckoning lately.” She unzipped the duffel bag, took out a manilla envelope. “William pled guilty. Paperwork is a courtesy for you. Plus some pictures, a letter from your mom, a letter from him, too.”
“Thank you,” David said. “When can we speak to him?”
“Another month,” she said. “We’re getting him into a facility that can help him, but we need to get an open bed, set your mom up in town, that sort of thing.”
“Where?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s all I can give you at the moment.” Kristy looked out the window, where Ruth stood beside their SUV, watching men load it with boxes. “She didn’t want to see me?”
“No.”
“Don’t blame her,” Kristy said. “I confirmed her worse thoughts about her son. How’s she habituating?”
“She’s been reading a lot. It’s slow going.”
“How’s it between the two of you?”
“Paradise,” David said, and they both laughed. “I’m not the man who walked out of his home that morning in Chicago in 1998. She’s not the woman I left there. I don’t love her any less. I think, in fact, I love her more, but those four years are a distance that will always be between us. And I grieve for William in a way that she does not.” David watched Ruth for a few moments. She was rearranging the trunk, showing the men where to put things. Her hair was completely silver now. She wore it pulled back in a ponytail most of the time, which David liked, since he could see her whole face, all the time. “We’ll do our time, Special Agent Levine.”
Special Agent Levine said, “Ten years will go quickly if you let it.”
David said, “Will you be here in ten years?”
“No,” she said. “Last scan had some bad news.”
“Where?”
She spread her arms wide. “You’re looking at it, Rabbi.”
“How long?”
“I try not to remember.”
David said, “The Talmud tells us everyone has a secret, something they are unwilling to face.”
“That’s not the Talmud,” Special Agent Levine said. “That’s a Springsteen song.”
David couldn’t help but smile. “‘Darkness on the Edge of Town,’” he said.
“Don’t try that shit on me,” she said. “It doesn’t work anymore.” She reached into the duffel bag again. “I have something for you.” She came out with a ziplock evidence bag. Inside were Dark Billy Cupertine’s brass knuckles. “I thought you might want these back.”
“Thank you,” David said.
“Don’t use them,” she said.
“Never again,” David said. He slipped them into his pocket. A horn honked. David looked outside. Ruth was behind the wheel of the SUV. He stood up to leave. “My chariot awaits.”
“Rabbi,” Special Agent Kristy Levine said, “wait. Can I ask you one last question?”
“Of course, Kristy.”
“Please,” she said. “Please. I must know. What happens next? Because I have not found the mazel you told me to find. I have not found enough of it. And I’m starting to lose my shit a little bit.”
David sat down. “Do you know the final words of the Torah? What the translation means?”
“No,” Kristy said. “I haven’t gotten that far.”
“The final words are an incomplete sentence. The Torah ends, effectively, on an ellipsis; it just continues, off the page, forever. And so I believe that what happens next is different for all of us.” He took Kristy’s hands. “The greatest gift God has given the Jews is each other. So I believe you will find those people who have always been your people, in whatever reality you find yourself. You design what happens next in your mind. You make it.”
