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Now it was sewing. Laurel was determined to learn, and she would, too-of that, Rivka was sure. She had a good strong backbone, this one. Not strong like her big sister, not like a soldier marching off to war. Sure, Laurel was the quiet one, but she was clever, too. Look how she’d managed to coax tongue-tied Shmueli out of his shell, simply by asking him if he would teach her how to read Hebrew. Laurel had seen what nobody else had, that nineyear-old Shmueli, in the middle between bossy Chaim and noisy Yakov, needed to have his say, to be listened to and looked, up to.

Now Laurel was holding up her redone seam for Rivka’s approval. “There, is that better?”

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Rivka nodded. “Perfect. Tomorrow, I will show you how to cut from a pattern.” She turned to scoop up Shainey, crawling at her feet. “What’s that you’ve got in your mouth?” she clucked, pulling out a spit-shiny jack the baby was sucking on, then calling across the room, “Yakov! How many times do I have to remind you not to leave your games lying around?”

Laurel was now holding out her arms to take Shainey, who’d begun to fuss. “Do you want me to put her down for her nap?”

“You’re such a doll. You read my mind, maybe?” Rivka, thinking of the choient she still had to make for tomorrow, and the ton of latkes she’d have to get started for Hanukkah, gratefully handed the baby over to Laurel.

Rivka, watching Laurel carry off Shainey, now happily snuggled in her arms, felt a surge of affection for the girl. Who would have thought that in just a few short weeks this little shikseleh could fit in almost like a part of the family?

A short while later, as Rivka was chopping onions in the kitchen, Laurel walked in carrying something under her arm-a sketch pad, it looked like.

“The choient,” Rivka explained to Laurel, who was now peering over her shoulder, “has to bake in a very slow oven overnight, so on Shabbat, when we don’t do any cooking, there it is, all ready, hot and delicious.”

“Will you show me how to make it? Then maybe I could surprise Annie. She really liked the stuffed cabbage.” Lowering her voice, she added confidentially, “I hate to say this, but Annie is a terrible cook. She burns everything. If I didn’t do the cooking, we’d both starve.”

Seeing the glint in Laurel’s eye, Rivka chuckled. Nothing about this blue-eyed, fair-haired bordekeh failed to surprise her.

Now Laurel was flipping open her sketch pad and sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Rivka, you’ve been so nice,” she began shyly, pulling a pencil from the sketch pad’s spiral binding. “I … I’d like to do something for you. Um, can I draw you? Sort of like a portrait?”

Rivka threw up her hands. “Draw me? When do I ever sit still long enough even to have my picture taken, I would like to know?”

“Oh, you wouldn’t have to sit still. Just pretend I’m not here.”

In the next room, Rivka could hear the boys squabbling, and Chava shrieking at them to stop, please, she was trying to do her homework. She sighed, thinking how not since she was an eighteen-year-old bride posing in her stiff white gown for the photographer had anyone thought of her as more than a pair of hands, a warm lap, a shoulder to cry on. And here was this little girl wanting to draw her portrait!

Nearly an hour later, the onions and tomatoes simmering, the beans soaking, Rivka washed her hands and dried them on her apron. At the table, Laurel was still hunched over her pad, pencil flying, so absorbed in her drawing that she didn’t see Rivka creep up alongside her.

Then Rivka saw what she’d done, and her hand flew to her mouth. “Vey iz mir!” she cried softly.

Right there on that piece of paper, Laurel had captured her exactly. Not like the Mona Lisa, God forbid … but something even better. She’d caught her expression exactly, harried and flushed, with those little hairs curling out from under her scarf-even a smear of flour on her cheek!-and look how the woman in the drawing actually seemed to be moving.

Rivka, feeling both touched and full of awe, absently brushed the flour from her cheek. Then she leaned over and kissed the top of Laurel’s shining head.

“Does that mean you like it?” Laurel’s big blue eyes searched her face.

“I like it.”

“I’m going to be an artist someday,” she said. “I’m going to sell my paintings, and make enough money so Annie won’t have to work.”

“A regular Picasso.” Rivka smiled.

“You think I could?”

“Darling, anything you set your mind to I know you could do.”

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“I should be so lucky,” Laurel quipped, borrowing one of Rivka’s expressions.

“Just watch out you don’t become a yenta like me.” Rivka laughed, remembering when she’d wondered how Annie and Laurel, such young girls, would ever manage without a mother and a father. But they would, she could see now. The two of them, baruch Hashem, they would do just fine.

Annie checked the order form against the merchandise.

2 doz. praline turtles

1 doz. dark chocolate hazelnut-rums

1 doz. white chocolate espressos

4 doz. champagne truffles

3 Ibs. bitter-chocolate almond bark

1 Coquille St. Jacques

All there, cradled in molded Styrofoam trays, in the big brown-and-gold Girod’s box on the counter in front of her. All except the Coquille St. Jacques-that was packed separately, in a smaller box.

She pulled it from the shelf below. She’d never seen a Coquille St. Jacques-a Girod’s specialty-except for the picture in the catalogue, and she was bursting with curiosity. Carefully, she lifted the top. A wonderful toasty aroma-a blend of chocolate, vanilla, coffee, nutsdrifted up. Gently she removed the inner cover of corrugated paper.

It was exquisite.

“Oh!” she cried softly.

A sheU of milk chocolate molded in the shape of a giant scallop, and filled with smaller shells. Bittersweet snails. Whorled clamshells. Chocolate-chip-sized periwinkles. Speckled cowries. Milkchocolate sea horses. Andlike something right out of Ali Baba-a pearl necklace fashioned from beads of white chocolate.

If only Laurel could see this! Annie hoped the guy

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she was delivering it to, whoever he was, would appreciate it half as much as she knew her sister would.

She glanced at the invoice-Joe Daugherty. The address was a restaurant, Joe’s Place, on Morton Street.

Just her luck. All the way down to the Village. And it was snowing like crazy out there. Oh well, at least she’d be in a warm cab. And maybe, since it was almost four, Dolly would tell her to go on home after she’d delivered her package.

She went to the narrow storage area below the stairs for her coat, and was pulling it on when she heard Dolly call out, “Lord, you’ll catch your death!”

Then Dolly was bustling over, snatching the coat off her before Annie could button it.

“Honey, you can’t go around in weather like this in a coat as flimsy as a handkerchief,” Dolly scolded. “But if you won’t let me buy you a new one, leastways let me lend you mine. I’m not going anywhere, not unless I have to.”

Annie, following her gaze, saw that the sidewalk and street beyond it looked like a sheet cake after a four-yearold’s birthday party, all the beautiful whiteness smashed and trampled.

Dolly reached for her own coat, hung casually over a peg on the wall-a gorgeous full-length Russian sable that had to have cost a fortune. Annie’s heart sank. She’d feel like a fool in it, like a beggar girl masquerading as a duchess.

“No thanks … I’d better not. I’d probably wreck it.”

“Nonsense.” Dolly held out the coat. “If I worried about every speck of dirt that got on my clothes, I’d be running around naked. I’m a lot more concerned with your staying healthy. Now, here, put it on.”

Annie knew her aunt was just being nice, but she felt a bit smothered. She wished Dolly would stop giving her stuff, like that scarf last week-sure, she’d needed it, but did it have to be cashmere? Plain wool would have been fine.

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But what would it hurt just to borrow it? It won’t kill me, and Dolly will be so pleased.

Annie, nevertheless, found herself turning away, pretending to be suddenly preoccupied with the order form stapled to the shopping bag in which the chocolates were now stowed.

“Maybe you’d better check this over before I go,” she said. “I took the order over the phone, but there was so much noise in the background I’m not sure I got everything. Does this look right?”

Dolly laughed. “Sounded like inside a car wash? That’d be his kitchen. I don’t believe Joe Daugherty has set foot outside of it since he took over that beat-up old place.”

“You sound as if you know him pretty well,” Annie commented, glad to get her aunt off the subject of her coat.

“Mostly through his father, Marcus Daugherty. He and Dale did some business-Dale bought a chunk of an office building he syndicated. A stuffy, stiff-necked type -he took it real hard when his only son quit law school to start this restaurant. Nice boy, he’s really made a go of it.” Dolly’s eyes sparkled. “Say! I bet you two would get along real well. Joe’s not much older than you, three or four years maybe.” She winked at Annie. “Not half-bad looking, either.”

Annie rolled her eyes. Sure, that’s just what she needed right now, Prince Charming in a white chef’s hat. Between this store, looking after Laurel, and worrying about Val, did she even have a free half-hour once a week?

A boyfriend? She couldn’t afford one, not now at any rate.

“Well, I guess I’d better get going,” she said, hoping to slip out before Dolly could press the fur coat on her a second time. I—A blast of cold air startled Annie, as a man in a Santa Claus suit staggered in, his fake beard drooping like an old billy goat’s, his boots clotted with snow.

“HO! HO! HO! Meeerryfuckinchrishmass!”

He stumbled over to the counter and sagged against

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it. His sour reek caused Annie to draw back sharply, engulfed by memories of her mother. But it was Gloria, busy tying tartan bows on a newly arrived shipment of chocolate Scotties, he focused on.

“Whassamatter? You don’ like Chrishmash?” Santa’s bloodshot eyes fixed her with a baleful glare.

Gloria dropped her roll of ribbon and slapped her palms down so hard on the marble counter on either side of him that his head jerked like a puppet’s. “Okay, Santa. You want the naughty first, or the nice? ‘Cause this is as nice as it gets, and you’re gonna see me get real naughty in about two seconds if you don’t haul your ass right outa here.”

His face sagged, and he cast her a reproachful look. “I jus’ wan t’wish ever’body a mer’ Chrishmash.”

“You get any merrier, buster, and they gonna lock you up.”

He straightened, attempting to strike an indignant stance, but he swayed on his feet, lurching forward as he stabbed a finger at the ceiling. “Now jus’ a fuckin’ minute!”

Then Dolly, in her crimson bolero jacket and black stiletto heels, was hurrying over, and Annie imagined her aunt grabbing Santa by the collar and tossing him out into the snow.

But Dolly was sliding an arm around his shoulders and drawling, “Hey, Bill. Remember me? It’s Dolly. Dolly Drake. Listen, you tell the brass at Macy’s that I think you’re doing a helluva job. It must be tough, hour after hour, listening to a bunch of kids whining about G.I. Joe and Barbie.”

Annie was shocked. Why was her aunt being so nice to that old drunk?

“Li’l bugger bit me! I ask him wha’ he wants from ol’ Santa, and he takes a bite outa me.” Bill drew his crimson sleeve back to show a ring of purple teeth marks on his puffy forearm. “Bad enough I gotta wear this shitty costume.” His bloodshot eyes shimmered with tears.

“You want me to call you a taxi?” Dolly asked in a conspiratorial whisper.

The Santa shook his head, his elasticized beard snagging

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on a button, and stretching down to expose a gray stubbled chin. A tear trickled down his cheek. “All I wan’ is a drink. It’s col’ out there. Fuckin’ snow ever’where … in my boots, in my eyes.”

Dolly paused a moment, deliberating. Then she patted his shoulder, and said, “Hold on there, Bill, I’ve got just the thing.”

Dolly ducked into the back room, appearing a moment later with a gift-wrapped bottle of Cherry Heering a customer had given her yesterday.

“Merry Christmas, Bill,” she said as she handed it to him. “And next time an elf bites you, you just bite ‘em back.” She winked.

Annie watched him give Dolly a long, sober-seeming look filled with gratitude, then stagger to the door. With a jingle of the overhead bell, he disappeared into a swirl of snow. She turned to Dolly.

“Do you really know him?” she asked.

Dolly shrugged. “I see him around the neighborhood, bumming quarters when he’s not working, which is most of the time. Nice guy, just drinks more than he should.”

“Why did you give him that bottle, then?”

Dolly shot her a sad smile. “Like the man says, it’s cold out there.” Her eyes turned suddenly bright, and for a moment Annie thought she was going to cry. Then she brought her hand, dry and soft as a powder puff, to Annie’s cheek. “There’s all kinds of sins in this world, sugar … but wanting to stay warm isn’t one of them. If he ever comes around to licking this, it’ll be in his own time, not when I tell him to.”

Annie felt ashamed, was suddenly filled with a new respect for her aunt. How could Dearie have disliked her so? What could Dolly have done that was so awful?

Annie walked over, and retrieved Dolly’s sable coat, which her aunt had tossed over the back of a chair.

Dolly clapped her hands with pleasure, light winking off the rings crowding her fingers. “Well, look at you … just like a movie st-” She caught herself and finished weakly, “Like a fashion model.”

Could she be right, Annie wondered-do I look like Dearie?

But before she could start thinking about how much she missed her mother, Dolly was hugging her and saying brightly, “Go on now, scoot. And tell that Joe I said hi.”