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“I don’t bite,” Gloria called out, moving out from behind the counter. She stuck out a hand and shook Annie’s. “Hi. I’m Gloria. I guess you two have a whole lot of catching up to do, so why don’t I close up and let you go at it.”

Dolly led Annie up to her office, and plugged in the space heater next to her desk for extra warmth.

“Now slip out of those wet shoes,” she told her niece, “and I’ll make you a cup of tea. You like chocolate?”

Annie nodded, looking around her, that suspicious look still firmly in place.

“Good, because that’s one thing I have lots of. And you look as if you could do with a bit of fattening up. Been pretty rough for you, huh?”

“Please … don’t tell Val,” Annie pleaded softly. Her clear, deep-blue eyes fixed upon Dolly with a scared, desperate look … but Dolly saw something hard there, too, a glint of steel.

She didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t want to make a promise she couldn’t keep, but at the same time she sensed that a wrong word now would send Annie bolting like a panicked deer. All along she’d had that niggling feeling down deep that everything was far from kosher where Val was concerned. Why else, after she’d learned

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the girls were probably in New York, had she held back from calling to tell him?

“Why don’t you tell me all about it,” Dolly said, “and let me decide. Fair enough?”

Annie was silent for a long moment, then she said, “I guess that’d be okay.”

Dolly boiled water on the hot plate in the storeroom, and made tea, which she brought to Annie in a thick ceramic mug. Annie held the mug balanced against her knee, not drinking from it, merely cupping her fingers about it—they were blue with cold, Dolly saw—and began to talk.

Haltingly, at first, then with gathering passion, she told Dolly about Eve, how she’d died, the hurried funeral to which only a few people had come. And then Val, in the weeks that followed, acting so strange … and finally, that night, the night they ran away …

“I couldn’t stay,” Annie said, leaning forward, her eyes bright and her cheeks a little flushed. “He would have … Well, I didn’t stop to think it through all the way. I just grabbed Laurey, and …”

“He’s saying you kidnapped her.”

The color drained from her niece’s face, except for those feverish splashes on her cheeks. “It’s not true! Laurey wanted to be with me!” Annie regarded her with a coolness that sent a ripple of unease through Dolly. “And I wouldn’t have come to you. Even if I had known how to find you. Not unless I was really desperate. I … I didn’t think you’d want us.”

Dolly felt the bare honesty of her words sock home, a dull blow in the pit of her stomach. Why, of course, you’re practically a stranger to her. And why should she trust you, after the awful things Eve probably told her?

“Did your …” She licked her lips. Her heart was doing a crazy riff against her rib cage. “Did your mama ever talk about me?”

“You had some kind of fight, didn’t you? She never said what it was about.”

Dolly felt her body sag with relief. Thanks to heaven, she doesn’t know the whole story.

“Sometimes, people say … or do … something

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hurtful that they’re sorry for later. And the more you love that person who let you down, the worse it hurts.” She sighed, the old pain surfacing.

Annie was staring at her, her dark blue eyes seeming to say, I’ll let you keep your secrets, if you agree to keep mine.

But could she make that promise? Even after what Annie had told her-and yes, she believed her-the plain fact remained that Val was Laurel’s father. Was it right, to keep a father from his daughter? After all, she hadn’t heard Val’s side… .

Then she looked into Annie’s blue eyes-so much like Eve’s it nearly broke her heart-and found herself saying briskly, “Val doesn’t have to know. Just leave everything to me. Now, drink your tea before it gets cold, and let’s see what we can do about straightening out this mess before it gets any worse.”

“Annie, why can’t we spend Christmas with

Aunt Dolly?” Laurel stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up at her sister.

Annie felt a bead of annoyance form in her stomach. How many times do I have to go over this with her? Why can’t she just trust me?

But she bit back the harsh words. No, it wasn’t Laurel’s fault. Why should she want to stay in a bare, empty apartment when she could have a tree and piles of presents at Dolly’s?

Annie reached for her sister’s mittened hand and squeezed it. “Look, Laurey, we can’t go to her apartment because it wouldn’t be safe,” she explained gently. “People would see us, and it might get back to Val.”

What if right now, this very moment, Val was on a plane, on his way to New York? He didn’t really care much

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about Laurel, Annie was sure, but he’d take her away in a minute, just to spite Annie.

Laurel, dropping her gaze, said nothing. Annie wondered if she was wishing she were at Bel Jardin, with Val, instead of here. Her insides suddenly felt as chilled as her chapped, cold-reddened hands. Should she tell Laurel everything that had happened that night with Val-the real reason she’d had to run away?

No, it was too awful to talk about. Annie just wanted to push it out of her mind.

God, how can I tell her how scared I am? She’s just a kid.

“But you’re working for Aunt Dolly,” Laurel reasoned. “And what’s so safe about that?”

“At the shop, nobody but Gloria knows she’s my aunt,” Annie explained. “But her apartment has doormen, janitors, nosy neighbors. If we started hanging out there, pretty soon everybody would know.” She gave her sister a little nudge. “Now come on, or you’ll be late for school.”

Most days, Laurel walked to school with a classmate, Rupa Bahdreesh, who lived on their block, but today Rupa was home sick with the flu. Certainly, Laurel was old enough to go by herself, but Annie liked keeping her company. Except now she was beginning to wish she’d gone straight to work instead.

Laurel glared at Annie. “I don’t care! I hate it here! It’s cold and yukky … and … and …” Her voice wobbled. “… we’ll be all alone on Christmas!”

“What about the Grubermans?”

“The Grubermans don’t celebrate Christmas.” Laurel’s wide blue eyes glittered with unshed tears.

Annie, not wanting Laurel to see the tears starting in her own eyes, looked away as they walked, concentrating on the sidewalk with its row of parked cars, grimy and salt-streaked from last week’s snowstorm, and the dirty snow pocked with yellow holes where dogs had peed on it.

“Well, of course they don’t believe in Christmas,” she said, keeping her voice even. “They’re Jewish.” Her words puffed out on tiny clouds of frozen vapor.

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“They’re not allowed even to speak the word!” Laurel burst out. “Sarah told me. It’s because it has ‘Christ’ in it.” She kicked a crumpled paper cup, sending it spinning out over the curb. “We might as well be Jewish if we’re not even going to have a tree.”

Annie couldn’t think of anything to say. She wanted a tree, too, and not just for Laurel. Should she have taken the money Dolly offered? She thought back to that first day at Dolly’s shop, Dolly pressing several folded twenties into her hand and pleading with her to take them. But Annie just couldn’t somehow. Not even when Dolly said it could be a loan. When would she ever be able to pay Dolly back? And if she accepted Dolly’s charity, wouldn’t she somehow be betraying Dearie? Once her mother had referred to Dolly as a “two-faced snake in the grass,” Did that mean that Dolly, no matter how nice she acted, couldn’t be trusted?

She’d settled instead for agreeing to work for her aunt, and accepted a small cash advance against her salary. But now it had been three weeks, and she still hadn’t saved enough to buy half the things they needed. The list seemed endless-long underwear, warm clothes, heavy boots. Dishes, sheets, towels.

She glanced over at Laurel, wearing a Salvation Army duffel coat that didn’t quite reach her wrists. Laurel’s bright hair spilled like sunshine from under the red knit cap squashed over her head, but her lips and the tip of her nose were tinged with blue.

“Are you warm enough?” Annie shivered inside her own coat, a man’s gabardine that flapped at her ankles.

“I’m okay,” Laurel said. “I’ve got a sweater on under this. Rivka gave me one of Chava’s that didn’t fit her anymore.” %-

More likely Rivka had seen that Laurel needed one, and had hunted one up that would fit her. But Rivka had been so nice, practically adopting her and Laurel into her big, noisy family, that Annie couldn’t help being grateful for the cast-off clothes and extra blankets, the fresh-baked kugel and loaves of challah she sent up to them.

“That’s nice,” she said as they turned onto Avenue

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K, which was wider and lined with red-brick apartment buildings.

“Guess what? After school today Rivka’s gonna show me how to sew, and when I get good enough I’ll even make you something… .” Laurel’s voice trailed off, and she peeped up at Annie from under her red cap with a sheepish expression. “Annie, I’m sorry I got mad at you. But it would be nice to have a little tree, or maybe just some holly branches.”

“Yeah … it would,” Annie forced herself to sound cheery, but inside she felt terrible.

Laurel’s outburst oddly had been easier to take than her sweet acceptance. Annie longed to give her little sister a nice Christmas. But the fir trees they trucked into the city from upstate were so much more expensive than Annie had imagined. Ornaments cost a fortune, too. No, it was out of the question.

Last year at this time, she recalled, they’d had Christmas at Bel Jardin with Dearie. Her mother was in pretty good shape, for a change. They had such a wonderful time decorating their tree, Dearie singing “Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer” and then Laurel chiming in with silly made-up verses of her own. Stringing colored lights, hanging ornaments, setting up the cr่che with Mary and Joseph, the three Wise Men, a donkey, some sheep, and Baby Jesus, of course. Except one of Baby Jesus’ plaster feet had broken off, so Dearie got out a tube of glue and said, “We’ve gotta get you fixed up so you can walk on water someday, my little man. Why, you’ve got a whole truckload of miracles to perform.”

Annie wished a miracle would happen now, like a tree suddenly dropping out of the sky.

At K and Sixteenth, they cut across the corner lawn of a neat red-brick house with a cut-out of Santa perched tipsily in the crook of its chimney. The frosty grass crunched like broken glass under Annie’s loafers. Halfway up the block, across the street, Annie caught sight of P.S.

99, a massive, grim-looking brick building surrounded by a high chain-link fence. So different from Green Oaks, with its lawns, playing fields, and tennis courts. Here just

a concrete yard and a crossing guard. Sort of like a prison. She hated Laurel’s having to come here every morning.

Annie remembered coming to enroll Laurel. She’d been so nervous, saying that she was Laurel’s guardian, and that her school records had been lost in a fire. But the school secretary hadn’t even seemed suspicious, just bored. Now Annie knew it was because a lot of the kids here were illegal, with parents from places like Haiti and Nicaragua who didn’t even have green cards.

Annie felt Laurel hanging back a little, her footsteps slowing, as if she’d hit a patch of ice that she needed to pick her way across. She must hate it there, Annie thought, feeling again as if she were going to cry, the thickness in her chest pressing the air from her lungs.

“Our class Christmas play is this Friday night,” Laurel said when they’d reached the concrete steps leading up to a row of graffiti-sprayed doors. “I’m in charge of the scenery. It’s going to be really neat.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

Laurel was so artistic. Annie remembered the wonderful cards she used to draw for Dearie in the hospital—amazingly lifelike dogs, monkeys, squirrels. And she had such an eye for color, too, like the other day, rescuing that old paisley shawl Rivka was throwing out, seeing how perfect it would be to dress up their own shabby couch.

“Do you think Dolly would come, too?”

“Why don’t I ask her? I bet she’d like that.” With forced brightness, Annie added, “Look, Laurey, about Christmas … Why don’t we invite Dolly over to our place? We’ll get some holly, and hang some mistletoe. And we’ll sing all the carols.”

“The Grubermans will hear us.” Annie could see the tiniest smile was prying at the corners of her mouth.

“Let them,” she said, feeling her spirits rise. “So what if everyone in Brooklyn hears us!”

“No, darling, you see how it’s crooked? Here, let me show you.”

Rivka pulled up a chair next to Laurel, sitting

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hunched before the old Singer in the corner of her crowded living room, the fabric swatches Rivka had given her to practice on spread across the girl’s lap. She showed Laurel how to measure the seam and mark it with pins, and then how to hold it steady under the needle while she pressed on the foot pedal that powered the machine.

Laurel nodded, and tried again, her fingers white with the strain of pressing the fabric flat while she stitched, so that no wrinkles would appear.

Poor little shainenke, Rivka thought, noting the child’s spindly arms sticking out from her too-big T-shirt, as thin and straight as the pins holding the pieces of fabric she was sewing. She tries so hard. Such a little wife!

The way Sarah had been at this age, hovering over Rivka in the kitchen, pinching off handfuls of dough to roll out, eager to crack eggs, dredge chicken wings, even to peel potatoes for kugel. And Laurel’s questions, they never stopped!

“Rivka, how come you threw away that egg?”

“Darling, it had blood on the yolk, that means it’s not kosher.”

And just yesterday:

“Rivka, how come your matzoh balls are so fluffy and mine came out like golf balls?”

“A little secret. With the batter, instead of water, I mix in seltzer. Then the balls, you must shape each one gently, gently, like you would pick up a newborn baby.”