"Something to help Lillian and Dina get back on their feet."
"But why?"
"I knew Daniel, and I owed him very much. Can I count on you to give this money to her?"
She bristled. "I won't be stealing it, if that's what you're worried about." She looked at the money again and shook her head. "It's too much."
And too little just the same, I thought. "She'll find good use for it, I'm sure."
"She'll want to know who gave this to her. What's your name?"
"My name's not important. Could you pretend your family collected this money for her?"
She nodded. There were tears in her eyes. "All right. I will. God bless you, whoever you are."
I ate at a small café on Malkei Yisrael Street. On the table to my right lay yesterday's edition of Davar. I picked it up and flicked to Birnbaum's column. He wrote about Israel's relationship with the United States. He really had a way with words, I thought as I finished reading and picked up the coffee cup, bringing it to my lips. All the editing he did paid off big.
I froze, my mouth full of hot coffee, my tongue stinging.
Editing. That single word resounded in my head like the tolling of a giant bell. What had Birnbaum told me? He'd said he needed to edit his column to make it perfect.
That memory conjured another. Anat Schlesinger telling me what Moria Gafni had been like as a student.
Feeling as though I’d been struck on the head by a lightning bolt, I gulped down the coffee in my mouth, grabbed my coat, and ran out of the café.
I sprinted up the stairs all the way to the third floor, the key to Moria’s apartment in my grip. I was so excited, I had to focus on steadying my hand to fit it into the lock.
I went straight to the bedroom, to the dresser. I couldn't remember which drawer it had been in, so I yanked all three open and went through them top to bottom.
It was in the third drawer. A simple notebook with a brown cover and half of its pages ripped out. I remembered that the first time I saw it, it had occurred to me that this notebook had the same paper as Moria's suicide note.
She rewrote each paper until every word was absolutely perfect, Anat Schlesinger had told me, and I hadn't given it a second's thought. Only now, my heart thudding and my fingertips sliding eagerly over the scratchy pages of Moria's notebook, did the significance sink in.
With shaky breath, I tore out the top page and held it to the light streaming through the window. "Yes!" I cried out, seeing what I'd hoped to see.
Then I got to work.
"I told you to leave me alone," Naomi Hecht shouted through her door.
I brought my face close to the wood. "Moria didn't do it because of you. I can prove it. Let me show you. Please open the door, Naomi."
Ten long seconds passed. Then the door swung open. "I think that was the first time you used my first name," Naomi said.
I pulled in a breath. Naomi looked very tired and very mournful yet also very beautiful. "You may be right. I'm not sure."
"I think it was," she said, frowning slightly. "But that's not so important, is it? You have something to show me, you said."
"Yes. I do."
"Come in, then."
In her living room, we sat together on the sofa. She wore a white dress reminiscent of her nurse's uniform, which was appropriate despite her having lost her job, given what I knew of her daily activities. I glanced at her wedding photo, my chest tight with sadness and shame now that I knew the truth.
I showed her the notebook. "I found this in Moria's bedroom. See? About half the pages are missing, torn out. I should have picked up on it the first time I saw it. I can't believe I missed it."
"Missed what? I don't understand."
"Look at these pages. They're the exact same type of paper as the one on which Moria wrote the note you found."
"And so?"
I related to her what Anat Schlesinger had told me of Moria the student. "I was sure you were the person Moria wrote about in her note because it included no name, and because Moria had arranged her death so that you would find her body. But the piece of paper you found that day wasn't her suicide note at all. It was merely a draft; one of many, I bet. Just like she did as a student, Moria rewrote her final message many times until it was perfect."
Naomi's eyes were bright hazel circles of astonishment. "Are you sure?"
I nodded. "Here's how I think it happened. You remember how neat Moria's apartment was? As though she cleaned it before ending her life? Yet you found what you thought was her suicide note on the floor, under the dining table."
"That's right."
"Until today, I thought Moria had left the note on the table, and the wind coming in through the nearby open window blew it to the floor. Now I think it happened another way. I think Moria had a bunch of drafts on the dining table, and one of them, the page you found, fell to the floor, and she didn't see it. She threw the rest of them out."
Naomi's breath turned shallow and quick. "So where is the final note?"
"By the time Moria died, the actual suicide note was no longer in the apartment. There's a strip of stamps in her dresser, and some of the stamps are missing. I can't prove it, but I think she mailed her suicide note. She never included the name of the recipient in her drafts because she didn't need to. There's no need to rewrite a name."
I showed her the page I'd examined in Moria's bedroom. It was blackened with lead. "This was the top page remaining in the notebook. I went over it with a pencil. It brought out the indentations left when Moria wrote her final note. Here. Read it."
Naomi peered at the page. "But there are two people mentioned here, not one."
