Chapter Twenty-Three
Evelyn groaned. She was still safely situated in the back of a New York taxi, but now, she was parked outside Congregation Beth Emeth in New Jersey.
It was the synagogue where she and David had gotten married.
“Good news,” Four said, glancing over her shoulder from the front seat. “We made it just on time!”
“On time for what?” Evelyn grumbled.
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Four opened her jacket, showcasing a blue sequined gown she was wearing as evidence. “We’re here for a wedding! Your wedding, in fact.” Four exited the vehicle, slamming the door behind her. “You ready?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Nope.”
Begrudgingly she stepped out, and felt a chill seeping through her bones.
Perhaps reminiscent of all that would befall them, the day that she and David had gotten married had been cold and foggy.
In the distance, just beyond the arches and stained glass of the temple, were the salt marshes of the Jersey shore.
Truth be told, Evelyn had never really wanted to get married in a synagogue.
Congregation Beth Emeth, like many synagogues in America, had begun feeling the pressure of changing demographics.
The older people had died or moved to be closer to family in their retirement.
The younger people had left for places with better jobs, in better areas, with more economic opportunity.
While the shul still ran services and had a small attached Hebrew school, they had not been asked to host a wedding in many years. Everything from the band’s stage to the tablecloths would need to be brought in.
David, however, liked the full-circle feeling of getting married in the same place where he’d had his bar mitzvah.
He had spent his whole life at Congregation Beth Emeth and envisioned their bright future beginning there together.
Wanting to be a loving future wife and all, Evelyn caved to the idea.
They settled on a small but affordable kosher wedding set over the holiday of Hanukkah.
Evelyn followed Four inside, where the wedding party and guests had begun to gather.
It was just as she remembered—a small but traditional-style Jewish wedding, with a men’s Tisch and women’s bedeken ceremony, before the signing of the ketubah.
Now, all the guests had moved to the main chapel for the big ceremony beneath the huppah.
She could see David at the end of the hall, surrounded by bridesmaids and groomsmen, all of them buzzing with frenetic energy.
But Evelyn was nowhere to be found.
“Has anyone seen Evelyn?” her mother-in-law asked.
From there, everyone grew frantic. The bathroom? I just checked the bathrooms. Did she go back to the hotel for something? The ceremony was supposed to start five minutes ago.
Evelyn sighed. Nothing had technically gone wrong that morning.
She felt fine. Her skin, like her hair and makeup, were all wedding photography ready.
She loved David, and she appreciated that her future family, whom she had known most of her life, had spared no expense to make their wedding day perfect.
And still, she had awoken feeling a bit like the weather, all moody and gray.
The sky, the clouds, the sand on the shoreline just beyond, were covered in a hazy and cold mist, until the gloom penetrated her skin and sank straight down into her soul.
She didn’t tell David about how she was feeling.
She didn’t want to seem ungrateful or like some sort of complainer to his family.
Instead, she forced herself to smile. She faked happiness.
She pretended that everything was okay to keep her mom, her in-laws and all the guests buzzing with joy and happiness . . . but then she saw the huppah.
It was spectacular.
Four towering poles of birchwood were adorned with white silk, then bathed in a soft blue light.
Around them, white peonies mixed with greenery, sparkling from a sheen of glitter that someone had spent time casting upon the petals.
A candelabra made of crystal had been situated in the center.
And it was beautiful. Perfection. But something about seeing the huppah—the expense that was made, the care that was given—suddenly made getting married to David feel very real.
Evelyn bolted. Right after the bedeken, but before the ceremony.
She grabbed a set of car keys from her mother’s pocketbook and escaped to her old jalopy of a vehicle that was waiting in the parking lot.
And she might have gone, turned the key in the ignition and taken off forever—might have saved herself the last two years of grief and heartbreak—except David slunk down into the passenger seat beside her.
The rest came out in a torrent of emotion.
Wild and restless, like the reeds of the salt marshes that surrounded them.
Nothing could survive with all that bitterness, all that bile and acid built up between them.
They would wind up just like her parents.
And David, sweet David, with his eyes creased downward around the edges, and his mother and sister who had just spared no expense to give her a dream wedding—she would disappoint all of them.
“Okay,” David said finally. “Let’s go.”
“What?”
She was surprised to find him so willing to play devil’s advocate, but David was adamant. “Drive,” he said, nodding toward the steering wheel. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“David,” she said, slapping his hand away. “Are you out of your mind?”
“What?” He smiled back at her. “You don’t want to get married? So, let’s not get married.”
“We have over two hundred people waiting in the shul right now!”
“So what?”
“Your mother spared no expense!”
“Look at me,” he said, and leaned over the console to catch her gaze.
“It’s not about them, okay? It’s not about anybody else, what they think, or what they did .
. . it’s about us. Me and you. You and me.
And I’m here, if you want to get married.
We’ll walk right into that synagogue and take our vows beneath the huppah.
And if you don’t want to get married, that’s okay, too.
We don’t have to get married. We’ll just leave this parking lot, drive away .
. . I still think we should go on the honeymoon, though. ”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “David . . .”
“Because I’m here, okay?” He leaned in closer, one hand on her arm. “I’m going with you . . . the entire way. You’re my cowboy, you know? My side-saddle rider. My teammate and friend. Which means wherever you go, however you want to do it . . . I’m in. I’m in, okay?”
She was waiting for David to wake up, to finally see her for the mess that she was . . . but instead, when she looked up, her gaze latched on to his, and she realized he was crying. Two tiny teardrops fell silently down his cheeks.
“My dad.” She finally got the words out. “My dad isn’t here.”
“I know.”
“He was supposed to, they were supposed to . . .”
In Judaism, both parents walked their children down the aisle.
And maybe that’s what it was all about. The bolting.
The fear. The beautiful huppah that his more well-to-do family had put together and paid for, everything so perfect for their wedding day and starting their life together . . . but all she wanted was her dad.
David took her cheeks in his hands. “I wish he was here, Evelyn.”
“I wish he was, too.”
Grief was such a funny thing. When her father first died, she had felt so numb.
She remembered struggling to cry at the funeral, wondering why she couldn’t.
But it was like someone had turned a switch off inside her.
She wasn’t capable of facing the full magnitude of the loss.
She had thought she could handle the wedding.
They had a plan, too. Her mom would walk her down the aisle alone.
They would read a poem during the service to honor his memory. She thought she could handle it.
Instead, grief caught her by surprise. All those old feelings she had tried to bury beneath functioning bubbled up to the surface anyway. And David—she couldn’t help but think it, even now, all these years later, watching it from the vantage point of a now divorced woman—David was remarkable.
He kissed her cheeks. He leaned all the way over the console, his entire body angled in the most uncomfortable position possible, simply to wrap his arms around her.
And he was so patient. He didn’t tell her that she was being hysterical.
He didn’t ask her to bottle it up so they could get back to the wedding ceremony and all the guests that were waiting.
He let her cry. Somehow, he found a way to be both her rock and her security blanket, until finally, she found the wherewithal to go back inside.
Watching her younger self walk back to the synagogue with David, there was a part of Evelyn that wanted to scream, shout to this younger version to trust her instincts and run away—that David would hurt her. But when she went to open her mouth, the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, her eyes drifted to their interlocked hands, and as they took the slow walk back to Congregation Beth Emeth, their bodies angled toward each other. Because their guests would wait. Because they needed these moments, some still and quiet center beside the acridity of a salt marsh.
They needed each other.
“Ma’am,” the taxi driver called out to Evelyn. “We’re here.”
Evelyn awoke with a startle in the back seat. She had fallen asleep in the most awkward position possible. Her neck was crammed up between the door handle and the window, and a dollop of drool had pooled on her hand. Quickly, she wiped the spit away and sat up.
Evelyn stammered, confused. “What?”
The taxi driver turned off the meter. “We’re here. Sixty-second and Third?”
Evelyn stared out the window. It was indeed her apartment building. She recognized the revolving door and the gold print on the awning. Congregation Beth Emeth was gone. David, along with all the guests of that day, had disappeared. It seemed impossible. Everything had felt so real.
“Hey,” the driver said, banging on the plastic barrier three times. “You awake or what?”
The words brought Evelyn back to reality. Quickly, she dipped her credit card into the slot on the monitor before racing upstairs for the safety of her apartment.
It had just been a dream. A visual aura of epic proportions. Because there had to be a logical explanation. A concussion. A brain tumor. Some sort of break in her psyche . . .
Out of sheer desperation, she pulled out her phone to text David.
But what if it wasn’t a delusion?
What if she were really seeing ghosts?
She had been visited by four ghosts—five, if she was counting Marla—and while her very Hanukkah retelling wasn’t exactly following the model of the original version, she knew where this story was heading.
She couldn’t allow herself to go there.
Even though it was far more likely that she was dying of some cerebral hemorrhage, she gave in to the remote possibility of something otherworldly occurring.
If what she was dealing with was paranormal, perhaps it could be helped along to get out of her life with the aid of some spiritual tool.
She was debating placing a quick order for sage over when her eyes landed on the menorah, still sitting untouched on her living room windowsill.
She went with instinct. Heading to her kitchen, she found a lighter, before returning to the hanukkiah on her windowsill. Then, she said the prayers and lit the candles for the fifth night of Hanukkah, before adding in a few extra prayers of her own.
She prayed that these spirits haunting her would go away. That Jared Sparks’s arrival tomorrow on set would be met without error. That her live-action musical would be a raging success. But mainly, she stared at the flickering lights of the hanukkiah and thought about David.