"Yes. There are."
"How can that be? What does it mean?"
"Again, I can't be sure, but I think Moria wrote and mailed two notes. Identical but for the recipients. The first is addressed to her father; the second to Dr. Leitner. Both men did horrible things to Moria and caused her great anguish, but it was only when the two combined in a particular way that she gave up on life."
"What did they do?" Naomi asked. "I know Moria hated her father, but what did Dr. Leitner do to her?"
I told her about Gafni's twisted love of his daughter and how that led to her mother's suicide; about how Dr. Leitner had blackmailed Moria to lobby her father for donations; and how, finally, Gafni had demanded a face-to-face meeting with his daughter, and that this Moria could not stand.
"Here are the photos Dr. Leitner's detective took," I said, giving her the envelope Ada Leitner had given me. "And the negatives. You should be the one who decides what to do with them."
With quivering fingers, Naomi opened the envelope and flipped through the photos. With each passing picture, her eyes turned wetter, until tears started sliding down her cheeks, as bright as crystals.
"It's too bad that son of a bitch is dead," she said when she finished looking through the photos, her face fierce despite her tears. "I would have liked to tear him apart with my bare hands."
I thought of Daniel Shukrun, dead after exacting his final vengeance. "I don't think Moria would have wanted you to languish in prison or be killed by cops. Not even for that."
Naomi wiped her cheeks dry. She put the photos back in the envelope and kept hold of it like a treasure.
"What about the gun you found in Moria's apartment?"
I explained about Daniel Shukrun. Dr. Shapira's culpability in the death of his son. How Daniel chose to hide the gun in Moria's apartment as a means of distancing himself from the shooting. His wish to complete his quest for revenge by killing Dr. Leitner. My shame in letting him go through with it.
Naomi reached over and squeezed my hand. My skin tingled at her touch. "It was his decision, Adam. It wasn't your fault."
I nodded, hoping that one day I'd be entirely convinced of that.
A minute of silence elapsed. Then I asked, "How did it happen? You and Moria, I mean."
Naomi drew back her hand and started fiddling with her wedding band. I followed her gaze to her wedding photo. "You know about my husband?"
"I know he lives in a convalescence home."
A sad smile tugged at Naomi's lips. "Convalescence for some, maybe. Not for him. He got injured in the war. January 1949. Shrapnel pierced his skull. It did incredible damage. It's a wonder he survived. But maybe that's the wrong way to put it because most of him didn't. He's alive, but nothing of him remains. Just a physical shell. The man inside is gone."
"I understand you visit him daily," I said.
"I do my best."
"It must be hard."
Pain coursed through her features. Her voice was frayed and resigned. "It's been three years. He shows no improvement. The doctors say he never will. But he lives, and I'm his wife, so I do what I must."
I looked at her. At her strong face that merely hinted at a much greater internal strength. She was an informal widow, trapped in continual, unceasing mourning and duty, her husband dead in essence if not in body.
Naomi sighed. "Three years is a long time, Adam. The loneliness gets difficult to bear. From time to time, a man would show interest, and I'd get tempted by the promise of warmth and touch, but I didn't want to betray my husband. Then, one day, Moria revealed her feelings toward me, and I just let go. In my mind, because she was a woman, I wasn't being unfaithful to my husband. At least that's how it felt in the beginning. Do you understand?"
She was looking right into my eyes, and in the depth of her irises swirled the maelstrom of emotion that had been her life these past three years. "Yes," I said. "I understand. When did it begin?"
"Seven months before Moria died. I ended it a week before. That was the fight you asked me about. I lied because I wanted our relationship to remain a secret." A pause. "Moria took it very badly. When I found her body, the note, I couldn't help but blame myself."
"Why did you end it?"
"Gradually, the lie I'd told myself, that this wasn't infidelity, lost its hold on me. My guilt became too great."
"Why did you never stay the night at Moria's? A friend sleeping over, it wouldn't have raised eyebrows."
"Moria had bad dreams, and she would talk in her sleep. One time, after we... well, when I was with her, she fell asleep, and she spoke of her mother. She didn't speak clearly, but I understood her mother had killed herself. I asked her about it when she awoke, and she became agitated, like she'd spilled some big secret. She had never talked about her mother before, and she wouldn't then either. Nor would she speak of her father, but I got the impression that Moria's hatred of him had something to do with her mother. After that time, Moria never allowed herself to sleep in my presence again."
This also explained why Moria hadn't wished to be Anat Schlesinger's roommate. Moria had secrets all right, but they were related to her dark past, not the gun I found in her apartment.
"Did Moria also have relations with men?" I asked.
Naomi shook her head. "Moria wasn't interested in men. Only in women."
"There were condoms in her bedside cabinet."
Naomi's smile was weak and tragic. "That was a joke, a ruse. She used to laugh about them. If anyone suspected her tendencies, she said, she'd show them the condoms and that sleazy, awful book she got from God knows where. 'Better to be seen as promiscuous with men than in love with a woman.'"
"Is that what she was, in love with you?"
"Yes. She told me she loved me many times."
"And you?" I asked, my heart beating fast and hard.
"I loved her, yes, but not in the same way. Not romantically. Moria helped fill a void in my life. She helped to dispel my loneliness. But I'm not like she was. I can't love a woman that way, not completely." Her eyes glistened with fresh tears. "She should have told me about Dr. Leitner. We would have found a solution."
"She must have worried you'd do something rash. She was trying to protect you."
