Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(76)

He’s looking at our hands as he talks, embarrassed.

“I’m really sorry,” I say. He looks up. “Please don’t worry about me. Let’s just call it even on mama drama, okay?”

This makes him smile. Oh Rebekah, she’s so funny.

“You have a sister?” I ask.

“I do,” he says, leaning back. “Her name Meredith. She lives in Delaware.”

My dad and Maria return to cook dinner for me and Iris. While we’re eating, my dad asks about Saul.

“Have you spoken to him?”

“I haven’t,” I say.

“He called your phone,” says Iris.

“When?” I ask.

“The first couple hours. I think I sounded kind of hysterical. I meant to tell you—I’m sorry. I just forgot.”

“It’s okay,” I say. “So he’s not in jail?”

“He’s not,” says my dad. “He called me, too. He wanted to explain.”

“Why did no one tell me this?”

“I didn’t know how you’d feel,” says my dad. “I haven’t heard your side of the story.”

My side of the story. They mean, do I blame Saul for what happened. What could have happened.

“I don’t blame him,” I say. “I mean, I don’t think he thought he was putting me in danger. Maybe he should have, a little, but he was … desperate.” And he wanted to do the right thing.

After dinner, my dad asks how I would feel about him meeting up with Saul.

“Maybe just for a coffee,” he says. “I’d like him to meet Maria.”

I tell him I would feel just fine about that, and that evening, after they leave, I call Saul.

“How are you?” he asks. I can hear a bus backfire wherever he is.

“I’m okay,” I say. “I’m alive. I’m bald.”

“Bald?”

“It’s a long story,” I say. “Saul, I’m sorry about Binyamin. Sara told me. I wish I’d known.”

“Thank you, Rebekah,” he says. “Can I see you?”

“Yes,” I say, “my dad wanted to see you, too.”

“I’d like that.”

“But first I want you to do something for me,” I say.

“Tell me.”

“I want you to get me in to see Aron Mendelssohn.”

Silence.

“I think they’re still holding him. Disposing of a body.”

“Yes,” says Saul.

“Do you know anybody at the detention center?”

“I do,” he says.





SATURDAY





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


It takes almost an hour of ID checks and waving electronic wands to get into the visiting room at the detention center in Downtown Brooklyn. Aron Mendelssohn is wearing plastic slippers and jailhouse orange. He is allowed a yarmulke, but his sidecurls are straight and hang low, grazing his shoulders.

I sit across from him at a long plastic picnic table.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I say.

“You are welcome,” he says. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I say, my hand going automatically to my head. I am still wearing the scarf.

“It will grow back,” he says.

“It will,” I say. “I hear you’re not talking to the police.”

He nods. “I read your article in the newspaper.”

“It doesn’t really tell the whole story,” I say.

He shrugs. “How can it?”

Good point.

“Did Miriam kill Rivka?” I ask.

Aron nods, almost imperceptibly.

“And Shoshanna?”

Again. Yes.

“Why?”

“I have no idea,” he says. He pulls on the end of his black and gray beard, which crawls over most of his long face. Without his big black hat and heavy coat, he seems smaller. His voice is soft. “Shoshanna, of course, I thought that was an accident. A tragedy. I came home and Rivka and Miriam were in the living room. Rivka was shivering. She’d left the children with Miriam while she went to run errands. Miriam and Heshy had only moved upstairs a few weeks before.”

“Where had they been living?”

“In Rockland County.”

“I’ve been told Miriam was … hospitalized?”

Aron nods. “Miriam is nearly twenty years younger than I. During much of her childhood and adolescence I was in Israel. I knew there had been difficulties. My father felt that the most important thing for the family was that she be safe. He felt safe meant away from other people. He found a place, upstate, for women. For years there were no problems. I returned from Israel while she was away. Rivka and I married. And then when Yakov was perhaps three years old, Heshy, whom I had known in Israel, arrived, looking for a shidduch. There was a dinner where they were introduced, and it was a match. They married and remained in Rockland County, where Miriam’s home had been. We hoped they might have children. They did not.

“Rivka and Miriam were very close once. When my father passed away, she felt a responsibility to care for Miriam—just as my father had cared for Rivka in her childhood. After Shoshanna was born, we brought the baby upstate. Miriam looked well and Rivka asked if she and Heshy might come live at the house, in the suite upstairs. Heshy told me he did not think it was wise. He said Miriam wasn’t ready to return to Borough Park. He was surprised when he learned Miriam had asked Rivka to make arrangements. I remember he told me, ‘There are too many eyes in Brooklyn watching her. Too many hands to hold her down.’ I thought it was strange, what he said. Later I realized he was using her words.”