Chapter Four #2
“They’re definitely here for him,” Father jested, though his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“And they’re right to be.” He chuckled, warm and fleeting—but the sound faltered, as if laughter cost him something.
He reached for the cup she offered, and his hand, frail and speckled with age, trembled visibly.
Maisie’s breath hitched as the teacup clattered against its saucer, a thin stream of tea sloshing over the rim.
“Father,” she murmured, her voice low but steady, setting the pot down. She reached to steady his hand, but he waved her off with a tight smile.
“I’m alright, my dear. Nothing to fuss over.”
But the lie settled heavily in her chest. The tremors had worsened. Now, even the smallest movements seemed to require an effort he could barely summon.
If Father could no longer practice… what would become of them all?
Deena still needed watching over, and their lives ran on such a delicate thread.
And Faivish—if he were to step into Father’s place, not merely as his pupil but as…
she hardly dared think it, yet it was always on her mind—her future husband?
Yes, she wanted that more than she could say. But never at this cost.
And underneath it all was the question she didn’t dare voice: did Father’s late-night talk with the Marquess have anything to do with this?
Or the whispers about poor Eleanor Spencer, whoever she was?
She couldn’t shake the thought that something—someone—was steering all their futures, and not in her favor.
Behind her, Faivish stepped closer, the sound of his boots soft against the floorboards. His gaze shifted from her father’s trembling hands to her face, and something unspoken passed between them. The usual ease in his features hardened into seriousness.
She wasn’t alone in this fear. He felt it too.
And certainty washed over her: that she was not alone in her worry. Everything about Faivish’s careful glance at Father bore the dense responsibility already pressing on his own future.
“Thank you for taking over, Faivish,” her father said, breaking the awkward silence as he lowered his hand to rest it firmly on the small table.
“It was nothing,” Faivish replied, his voice measured, his eyes still fixed on the older man. Maisie caught the flicker of something in his expression. Not pity. Respect, perhaps. Or concern. Deeply so.
“It was everything.” Her father shook his head, shoulders slumping slightly.
“These tremors…” His voice trailed off, and he raised the teacup again, though this time it barely made it to his lips before his hand faltered, spilling more of the cooling tea into the saucer.
Muttering something under his breath, he set the cup down with as steady a movement as he could manage.
“I can’t practice anymore, my boy. And you cannot hold them off for me much longer. ”
“Who?” Maisie asked, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. Her gaze darted to Faivish, who had turned now and stood near the window, his frame tall and still as stone. “What does he mean?”
Father sighed, folding his hands in his lap. It seemed to cost him something to look her in the eye. “I—I couldn’t manage the mallet earlier. My hands … they wouldn’t do it. Faivish stepped in. He did the gold foil fillings. He’s as good as I was before the tremors.”
The knot in Maisie’s stomach pulled tighter. Her deepest hope sat within reach—Faivish at her side, her father still at the heart of the practice, Deena safe under their roof. It should have been happiness. It nearly was.
But sometimes, wishes came true at the wrong cost.
She’d imagined her father placing Faivish’s hand in hers with pride under the chuppah, a wedding canopy decorated with flowers for them.
Instead, Father’s tremors had worsened. And lately, his gaze lingered on her not with joy, but with a quiet sorrow she couldn’t name—creases etching deeper at his brow, his mouth tugged downward as if some unspoken regret lived there.
She wanted to help and would have given everything to see Father smile again.
But the truth sat heavy in her chest: he was fading.
Slowly, perhaps. But unmistakably. And Faivish’s place beside her felt less like a celebration and more like preparation.
If only she knew how and what to prepare for… her heart dropped.
Not because Faivish wasn’t worthy. But because it meant her father could no longer carry the weight himself. What if this was as close to her dream as she’d ever stand—a future shaped by fear and tenderness, always one pane of glass away from shattering?
“I’m afraid I can’t work alone now,” Father said. “I will soon retire to mere paperwork and lectures for the faculty. You’ll be essential in carrying the highest standard for our patients into the future.”
Maisie blinked, her lips parting, the surge of emotions caught somewhere between disbelief and worry.
She turned her attention to Faivish, whose gaze briefly lifted to meet hers before darting away again.
His profile, outlined by the soft glow through the window, betrayed absolutely no self-congratulation.
“I’m not permitted the highest standard,” Faivish said quietly, finally breaking the silence. “Otherwise, the university would allow me access to the new techniques.” His words were clipped but steady, though Maisie heard the undercurrent of frustration.
She knew what he meant. Civil rights or not, prejudice still lurked in the corridors of the faculty, polite enough to smile at him in lecture halls but cold enough to bar the doors to certain privileges.
The techniques Father had brought back from the university—ones that could transform a patient’s smile—had been offered to other students without hesitation.
Gentile students. Preferably titled ones.
Faivish had been Father’s most gifted pupil, but still, Rector Hofst?tter had found reason to delay his training in them at university, and only Father had taught him privately. Maisie knew that now.
Vienna might grant Jews the right to live and work openly, but it did not grant them the same welcome.
Faivish downed the tea she had poured for him, setting the cup down with a precision that belied the anger behind it. His self-control was immaculate; only in his eyes could she glimpse the turmoil beneath.
She caught the faint downturn of Faivish’s lips as he moved to the treatment chair, his hands deftly adjusting the headrest and smoothing the clean white linen across its surface. His shoulders squared—not with pride, but as if bracing for a weight that would never lift.
“I don’t understand.” She heard the words, she knew the facts, but the why still stung.
Faivish adjusted the headrest, smoothing the linen with precise care.
“On paper,” he said at last, “I have every right to the same instruction as any other student. Yet somehow, invitations to special lectures are misplaced. Demonstrations begin just before I arrive. Newer methods always seem to be taught to others.”
His voice was steady, but Maisie heard the controlled strain beneath it, the bitterness of years spent swallowing the same truth. It wasn’t law that kept him on the margins—it was the quiet narrowing of eyes, the polite omissions, the doors left half-shut.
She wanted to reach out, to pull him into a world where the air wasn’t so sharp, where he didn’t have to carry the burden of being acknowledged, yet never fully embraced.
“Don’t worry about it, Maisie. It’s hardly worth noting,” Father said.
His voice was light, brushing past an awkward moment.
Yet, the tightness around his mouth always came at the cost of leaving things unspoken.
“Just university politics,” he added, and the words fell slower now, weighted with the truth Maisie had come to fear.
“Politics, indeed,” Faivish muttered, and though his voice stayed even, Maisie heard the bitter edge beneath it—one she’d learned to recognize over the past few months.
It was the sound of him holding back more than he said for fear of trespassing into dangerous territory.
He’d told her that this was a promise he’d given his mother the night his parents had been taken from their shop and killed.
He’d keep his head low. And yet, she could tell how he bristled against it.
Father exhaled heavily, his hand settling beside the half-spilled tea. His gaze fixed on Faivish for a long, unreadable moment, as though weighing something important. “Perhaps it is time you knew—” he began, but then stopped abruptly, his mouth tightening.
Faivish straightened a fraction in his chair, the movement subtle but alert. “Professor—there’s something I’ve been meaning to—”
Father’s hand lifted in quiet interruption, his eyes softening in a way that sent a shiver down Maisie’s spine. Whatever passed between them was invisible to her, but she felt it like a sudden draft through the room.
From her place across the table, Maisie’s fingers tightened into the folds of her apron.
The silence between the two men seemed to stretch, filling the space with unspoken things that pressed against her chest. “T—tell me what is wrong!” she blurted, the words tumbling out before she could stop herself.
Faivish turned toward her, his expression smooth as glass. She searched for a crack, a flicker of truth—but all she met was that calm mask he wore whenever he wanted to spare her worry. He glanced once at Father, a look that felt like a plea for leave to speak. But Father’s gaze was steady. Closed.
“Perhaps another time,” Faivish said at last with a sigh that resonated with the one Maisie suppressed.
His voice had gentled, but the words still landed like a door shutting.
He set the brass tray on the table and aligned the instruments, each click of metal against metal too careful, as though order might erase the moment. “The next patient is waiting.”
The murmur of women carried in from the waiting room—light, eager voices that belonged to a world untouched by the heaviness pressing in here.
Father said nothing. Maisie stood rooted, her arms slack at her sides, the weight of unsaid things settling heavier than any tray.
She narrowed her eyes, watching Faivish step into the corridor, the door closing softly between them.
The swell of voices outside rose momentarily, then dimmed again, as if the practice itself held its breath.
Father sighed, the sound worn, and reached for his tea. His hand trembled before the cup touched his lips, and he set it down untouched. “Another time,” he murmured—not to her, not even to Faivish, but as though repeating a thought he’d carried too long.
From the other side of the door came Faivish’s steady tone, muffled but sure: “You’re the best now, Professor. You’ll take my place someday.”
“I promise I’ll do everything you’ve taught me.”
Father exhaled, as if those words gave him a moment’s peace. But for Maisie, there was no comfort in them.
Her mind churned like an unquiet sea. Was this silence—this refusal to name what they both knew—linked to the Marquess’s visit?
The hushed conversation she had overheard through the kitchen door the night before?
She remembered the fragments she wished she could forget: Hofst?tter…
Jewish troubles… Eleanor Spencer is dead…
nobody needs to know. And, softest of all: What about Deena?
The names tangled inside her, barbed and sharp. What could Father possibly have meant?
Nothing about the future felt steady now—not Father’s work, not the practice, not the promise Faivish had whispered into her hair.
And as the waiting room’s voices lifted again, as eyes turned toward her with idle curiosity, Maisie held herself very still, aching for the day she would be something more than a fleeting glance in Faivish Blattner’s crowded world.