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There was a chill to the air inside. Maybe because the home’s owner was dead, maybe because the heat had been set at fifty-eight degrees, maybe both. The first thing Shira did was turn up the thermostat. She didn’t want Leo shivering when he stepped through the door.

Then they vacuumed, dusted, brushed dog hair off couches. The house was in pretty good shape. Probably Leo’s dad hadn’t wanted to return to a dirty house. Shira felt her first stab of grief for him, the man who’d left his house fully assuming he’d come back to it. “I still have all the chairs rented for the party,” Shira said, surveying the living room. “So we’ll bring them over. Mom and Dad can help.” Another pang at the thought that the chairs that had been sat on to celebrate would now be sat on to mourn. “I’ll call the company and see if we can get the rental extended, otherwise I’ll just pay the late fees. Let’s clear space now.” They moved couches and tables, made room. “Okay, that should do it for now. I’ll call the deli in a bit and order some sandwich platters. Is there anything else we should do?”

“Cover the mirrors,” Talia said. “You’re supposed to cover all the mirrors at a shiva.”

They found sheets in the hall linen closet, then moved through the house draping them over all the reflective surfaces, even the one in Leo’s dad’s bedroom. Shira paused in the doorway of Leo’s old room. It had been scrubbed of much of its personality—no more posters for the Pokémon movies or the classic-rock bands he claimed he’d loved as a kid but that Shira was pretty sure his dad had convinced him to say he liked, no more baseball bedding with little men hitting little balls—but the bed was roughly in the same place on the far wall, the desk on the near one, the pull-up bars in a conspicuous spot by the closet where visitors couldn’t help but clock them, though Shira couldn’t help but clock that they couldn’t be used very much if he’d left them behind.

“This Leo’s old room?” Talia appeared beside her like a ghost. Shira started, leaping forward to drape one of the old sheets she’d gotten from the linen closet over the mirror on the back of Leo’s door.

“Yup.” Shira stepped back, her face now blazing hot for no reason.

“Shame you two never worked out,” Talia continued, breezy as usual. “Always thought you would be good together, but you never liked each other at the same time.”

“It’s none of your business,” Shira said brusquely, backing down the hall. She stopped when she realized she was about to fall down the stairs. “He’s too good for me now, anyway.”

“Oh, would you stop doing that?”

“What, putting myself down?” Shira was oddly touched in a way that made it tough to meet her sister’s eyes. She took one step down the staircase, fingers tracing one of the dusty photographs hanging along the side. “Should we take some photos of Leo’s dad down to put on tables or something?”

“I think we can let Leo decide if he wants to do that.” Talia pushed past her and clomped down the stairs like a clog dancer, which, given her eclectic list of hobbies, maybe she’d actually won a few championships at. “No, I mean, would you stop acting like someone’s achievements define what they’re worth? It’s one of the reasons I quit martial arts.”

God, how had Shira almost forgotten Talia had been a karate champion back in the day? The years really flew by. “You could’ve gone pro, I bet,” Shira said. “It would’ve been really cool, telling people my sister could beat them up. ‘No, like, seriously, my sister could really beat you up.’ ”

And then Talia’s skill at languages. How many languages did she speak fluently? Five? “And what about your language skills? You could be a professional translator.”

“Not everything has to be about work,” said Talia. “Some things can just be about personal fulfillment. I like speaking all these languages. It’s going to help me as a rabbi because I can use those skills to help people in the community. It’s why I decided that’s the path I wanted to pursue, actually. Becoming a rabbi. I don’t want to be some shiny trophy in a silver case that people are jealous of. I want to be out helping those people.”

Shira absorbed her sister’s words, a fire alarm light blinking silently red above them. “I don’t think I ever realized that’s why you quit martial arts.”

“Yup,” Talia said. “It’s better for you if you define your worth by what you can do for other people, versus how you look to other people. Anjali’s really been helpful in that regard.”

“Who’s Anjali?” Shira asked in order to avoid engaging with her really very astute point, because accepting that her younger sister was wiser than her was an impossibility.

“Oh, my girlfriend,” Talia said. “Did I not tell you about her?”

“I have literally never heard the name Anjali before in my life.” And yet, somehow, Shira wasn’t that surprised. She’d always kind of figured she’d learn she was an aunt when Talia one day showed up at some family event with a baby in her arms.

“Oh. It’s been maybe…” Talia squinted at a photo of Leo smiling painfully before a neutral school backdrop. “Eight months?”

“Eight months and I’ve never even met her?” Shira cried, now a little insulted.

Talia shrugged. “Well, you do live in LA.” She was quiet for a moment. “You don’t have a job now that can’t be done here. Do you think you’ll ever move back?”

“I…” The words stuck in her throat. Her mom delicately broached the subject every few months on the phone, but Shira always moved quickly to quash it. Somehow moving out of LA, even though she had no concrete reason to be there anymore, felt like losing. She’d been the girl who’d moved to the big city to follow her dream. If she left the big city, didn’t that officially mean she’d lost the dream?

Or did it even matter anymore? “I don’t know,” Shira said honestly. “I really like my synagogue that I found. But…” But it would be nice to have met Anjali after a more normal two or three months. It would be nice to see her parents more than twice a year. It would be nice to experience seasons again. “I don’t know. I should probably stay at my job for two years, right? Then I can reassess.”

“Hmm,” Talia said, as if she were too nice to call bullshit even though she was definitely not nice at all.

Shira took a deep breath. “Okay. We got the mirrors. I’m going to go put in an order for the food.” And she marched off, having made at least one decision.

17

Leo was numb. Entirely numb. Like he’d gone in for dental work and instead of a small anesthetizing needle in the gums, the dentist had pulled out a giant needle and plunged it into the middle of his sternum.

It was affecting his hearing, too. Every time Emily said something to him, she had to repeat it two or three times before he even realized she was speaking. Like he was always standing in the middle of a wind tunnel.

To her credit, she didn’t let it bother her, or at least she didn’t show that it did. “We can go all together on a ten eleven flight,” she said quietly, and somehow the expansive gesture she made with her arm told him that by all together she meant them and his grandparents and…the body.