Chapter 36 #2
“I don’t know.” Max shrugged. “He said you had been doing this too long, that you had watched Mordechai one too many times. That you’d learned how to do all of what he did and you believed, fiercely, in it.”
“That’s why you were successful,” Claire put in.
It was everything I could do not to stare at them. “He told you that?” I asked carefully. “Is that what he told Officer Hernandez, too?”
“That’s what he said.” Max leaned closer to me, so did Claire.
Then Steve leaned in, too, smelling of orange juice and bourbon and something else—something hopeful.
None of us looking at the other person. “But what I know is this. I know that I needed you. I needed you more than I needed anyone, anything, in my whole life. I needed you to believe in what I was saying and to actually take action. I’d gone to shrinks, Delia.
A dozen of them. I’d gone to priests. Mordechai was the first rabbi I’d gone to, and by the time I reached him, he was gone too. ”
I winced. “Well, that wasn’t really his fault,” I said quietly. Clearly, Rabbi Ethan hadn’t told these guys everything.
Max didn’t slow down, though. “Bottom line, coming out here was a risk. You knew it was a risk, that you might not be able to help, but you came out anyway. And you saved our lives.”
“And can do it again,” Claire said, never one to miss making her point.
“Claire…”
“I think she’s right,” Steve said abruptly, startling me. “Claire told me about your skin, the day you came to see her. That was the day you came to the club for me too.”
I grimaced. “Claire’s got a big mouth.”
She giggled. “I also told both of them about Brad. About what you did, warning me.”
I blinked at her. “I wasn’t doing that to be nice, let me assure you.”
“But you still did it,” Max said. “It would have been crueler for you to let her relationship go on, knowing he was cheating on her, right?”
I hadn’t thought about that. “I guess.” I squinted at him. “Wait, she told you about that?”
“I told him everything,” Claire said, with emphasis. “He’s an investor.”
“He’s coming back,” Steve said, jolting me all over again. “The rabbi guy.”
Claire’s nonsense slipped away from my mind, like a breeze over the water. We stood, and I folded up the blanket, suddenly self-conscious. Officer Hernandez waved from the paddock fence, but she didn’t come any closer. I felt kind of bad about that. How much did she know?
“Max, thank you for inviting me into your home,” Rabbi Ethan said as he stopped in front of us. “I appreciate you trusting me. I suspect your sister will as well.”
Sonillion. The name snaked through me, cold as ice, so harsh and horrible, I sighed.
Rabbi Ethan frowned at me. “That’s not a good name to know, Delia,” he said, as Max looked at him in confusion.
“Yeah, well. It’s one you should know. She’s not done yet.”
He tilted his head. “Did you know my uncle had a file on you?”
I grimaced. “I saw it, but I didn’t read it. I didn’t get a chance to.”
“I didn’t think so.” His smile was gentle. “Would you like me to send it to you?”
I hesitated. Rabbi Mordechai had known what I was the moment he’d laid eyes on me.
He’d never tried to stop me, though. Never tried to help me, not until the end.
He’d wanted me for what I could bring to him.
He’d wanted to protect me from myself, maybe.
He’d tried to keep me safe enough, close enough, so that I couldn’t do harm to myself or anyone else.
There was no telling what all, exactly, his reasons were.
Because he’d guessed wrong, in the end. About his own strength, about mine.
About the creature that was inside me, crouched and waiting to spring. I didn’t know.
“I’m…I’m sorry. Truly.” It wasn’t an answer to his question, I knew. But I wanted to say it anyway, and I felt the tears surge up inside me, tears so hot and fierce I realized I’d been waiting to cry them for days. Weeks.
“I understand.” Rabbi Ethan’s sigh was heartfelt. “There’s a reason why we call the leader of darkness the Hinderer, Delia. Do you know what that reason is?”
Another question to answer, as if I’d memorized it.
Because I had.
“He keeps people from God. He—it—whatever, hinders people in their relationship with God.”
“That’s exactly so. And when Rabbi Mordechai finally reached for you that last day, after he had made all his prayers and given you all the advice he felt you most needed to hear, what do you think happened to him?”
“I think I might have killed him.” I squeezed my eyes shut, and the tears did fall then. Max made a choked noise beside me, but not of revulsion, not of disgust or fear. Just grief. He reached for me, held me, and my shoulders shook as the rabbi stood in judgment before me.
But the rabbi wasn’t done. “My uncle didn’t only have blocked arteries, Delia.
He had acute rheumatoid arthritis. There was a reason why his office was always freezing cold.
There was a reason why he had started moving more slowly.
He was in pain, sometimes constant pain, and still he went out and served his people, still he went out and touched their lives.
Even though he had retired, he went. He went because of you, I think.
He went because he wanted to show you that he could.
He went because it was still the Creator’s plan for him to do so. ”
“I know.” My words were a broken sob. “I’m so sorry.”
“And that last day, he didn’t want to be kept anymore from meeting God. And you helped him with that, Delia. You helped him in his greatest moment of need.”
“I—what?” I looked up at the rabbi, his face swimming as my eyes still filled with tears.
“Your whole life you knew that something had been wrong inside of you, something you wanted to fix, something you wanted to heal. It’s why you worked as a dog walker at ten years old, when your mother was too drunk to keep tabs on you.
It’s why you painted your walls and stayed apart, and why you chose to fight. ”
“I didn’t choose that.”
“You’re wrong,” the rabbi said simply. “And in the end, the undoing of your shadow creature was that you let yourself be drawn into Mordechai’s embrace.
It would have been smarter, by far, to step away from the grasping arms of a rabbi who knew your strength, who knew that the heat of your darkness would be his final test.”
“A test he failed.”
“A test he passed.” The rabbi reached out a hand and placed it on my shoulder.
He didn’t flinch. He should have flinched, but he didn’t.
“We should all die doing that which we most feel provides good. He wished to make this sacrifice to show you what you were capable of, to open your eyes to see not only what you didn’t want to see, but what you needed to see.
That you were strong, Delia. That you let him hold you, Delia, even as he commanded that which was inside you to go, to flee, to begone. ”
“It didn’t go.”
“It didn’t, not that day. But it was nevertheless unmasked.
You left that night a changed person, and only you knew it.
You, and my uncle. Because you gave up his name, at least part of it.
You saw the demon within you for what he truly was.
You were the one who knew the other demons’ names, Delia.
Always you. And you finally named your own as well.
And that was the moment that everything changed. ”
“But why did Mordechai have to die?” The question was too soft, too plaintive. But I couldn’t help asking it.
“Because his work was done.” Rabbi Ethan shrugged. “Yours isn’t.”
We turned, then, to the house, and Max slipped one arm over my shoulder, his other hand into Claire’s.
Steve took my other arm, linking me, anchoring me.
Connecting me still to this world of sky and earth and people.
I didn’t know what my work was. I didn’t know what life would hold for me. I mostly didn’t want to know.
“Goodbye,” I whispered into the stillness of the morning.
Hello, something whispered back.
Or maybe I imagined that.