The Intimacy Experiment (The Roommate #2)(12)

Before he’d become a rabbi, Shabbat dinners at the Cohen household had been few and far between, less religious practice and more an excuse to have friends or family over. The prayers had been hastily muttered in an effort to get to the food sooner. For a moment, Ethan selfishly envied the rabbis who had generations of devout practice in their bloodlines.

It was impossible to deny that on the spectrum of religion, he’d spent the last six years moving further away from his closest kin.

His mom winced. “I didn’t think this through, huh?”

“I’ve seen worse,” he said, which was technically true, but not by much.

When Ethan was growing up, the Cohens had worshipped ambition more than the Torah. His mother had made herself in this town, had risen through the ranks of the studio machine against men who wanted nothing more than to prove she didn’t belong. By the time Ethan was in high school, she’d become a powerful agent. Everyone had always assumed her children would follow in her footsteps, and maybe if his father hadn’t died, Ethan would have.

Renee had worked so hard and accomplished so much, sometimes all of them forgot there was anything she couldn’t do. Ethan had been groomed from childhood for a slick role behind a big desk, making and breaking deals and dreams. Renee liked to blame the cherublike curls he’d inherited from his dad for the fact that she thrust him into the arms of various strangers from an early age and then never stopped. “You were born with a face that’s good for business.” Productive, efficient, and goal oriented. That was his mother in a nutshell.

When the candles were finally lit, Ethan quickly moved to do the blessing over the wine.

To her credit, his mom had shrugged it off when he’d studied physics instead of business in college. She’d built a reputation on rolling with the punches, which was why it was so obvious how uncomfortable she was now, trying to recall prayers that she hadn’t said with any regularity in almost a decade.

After a few more awkward stops and starts, they made it through the remainder of the blessings, the hand washing, and the challah. With simultaneous sighs of relief, they finally sat down to eat. The table seemed to stretch a mile long from end to end.

“Do you like the challah?” his mother said, breaking the awkward silence. “I went down to that bakery on Melrose you’re always talking about.” She leaned forward slightly, obviously eager to pull off at least one part of this evening without a hitch.

“It’s great,” Ethan said, and it was. Light and mouthwatering, the top a perfect golden-brown braid. “Thanks for going to all this trouble, Mom. I appreciate it.”

Renee smiled. “Of course. I want you to feel comfortable here.” She stared at the empty seat at the head of the table.

Her meaning was clear. She wanted him to keep coming back, even after his father’s death. After Ethan had run away to Brooklyn to live with his cousins. After he’d decided to become a rabbi and built walls between them she didn’t know how to climb.

It was his dad who had always cared about maintaining the Jewish traditions, including Shabbat dinner. Ari Cohen had held together a lot of things in this family that they didn’t notice until he was gone.

So many of Ethan’s interactions, with Leah and his mother both, had pivoted in the wake of his dad’s death. In their individual responses to it. They’d all thrown themselves into work. Had let it pull them in different directions until every time they came back together, they bumped into each other like puzzle pieces warped so that they no longer quite fit.

Ethan reached across the table and squeezed his mother’s hand, trying to will some of the stress away from her brow.

“This is where I grew up. I always feel comfortable here.”

It wasn’t until his mom looked away that he realized maybe he’d lied. The truth was, he avoided the house when he could.

He recalled a concept from the Jewish mystics—rishima—“the imprint an experience leaves.” They believed that if you endured something and let it pass without memory or reflection, if you didn’t change after having gone through it, it was as if the event had never happened. But if an experience left an imprint, if it inspired growth or altered the course of your life, then, according to the mystics, even the most painful and challenging experiences become a blessed teacher.

The hollow echo of his dad at this table, the phantom feeling of his hand heavy on Ethan’s head as he said the blessing over his children, was rishima, and even as it ached, it was better than living a life that didn’t acknowledge what had happened to them all.

His mother went to the kitchen and returned carrying bowls of soup. Ethan jumped up to help her. She pressed a quick kiss to his cheek with her hands full. His mom thought that his commitment to religious study had changed him, turned him into a man she didn’t fully recognize, but for all the ways he’d evolved since twenty-six, he still craved the comforts of this house and the people inside it.

“So,” Leah said once they’d all tucked into their bowls, her voice like a bridge across the void of uncomfortable silence that had settled between them. “What’s new?”

“We closed an acquisition today.” His mom passed him the salad. “Brings the agency’s employee count up to four hundred.”

Leah let out a low whistle. “Damn, Mom.”

His mother ducked her head in acknowledgment. “Thank you. Thank you.”