While We're Far Apart by Lynn Austin Page A

blessed Avi and Sarah with a little daughter.
    Jacob didn’t even try to stuff the letter back into the envelope. It couldn’t be done. The bandages must come off. Now. If he couldn’t cut them off himself, he would swallow his pride and go upstairs and ask his tenant for help. Jacob started toward the door, then stopped. Ed Shaffer wouldn’t be there. In the aftermath of the fire, Jacob had forgotten that his tenant had left to join the army. Well, maybe one of the children could help him cut off the dressings. He gripped the doorknob between both hands and turned it. The door opened – and the boy from upstairs tumbled into Jacob’s living room as if he had been sitting on the floor with his back against the door.
    “What in the world . . . ?”
    The boy scrambled to his feet, ready to run.
    “Wait. Don’t run away, please.” Jacob tried to corral him with his cumbersome hands. “I would like to ask a favor of you.”
    The child turned to him, and the fear Jacob saw in his eyes made him feel like an ogre in a fairy tale. He hadn’t meant to frighten him. The boy had never run from Miriam that way. But then Miriam Shoshanna had spoiled both of those children, passing out caramel drops and slices of honey cake. Surely they knew she was gone, didn’t they?
    Jacob shook his head to clear his thoughts. “Could you come inside please and help me with the radio? I cannot do it so well with these.” He held up his hands. He tried to smile to put the boy at ease, but his smile felt so forced that Jacob wondered if he had forgotten how. “Come, come. The radio is right here.” He rested his hand on the child’s shoulder to herd him through the door. “Tell me your name again?”
    Instead of replying, the boy dug into his pocket and pulled out a piece of lined notebook paper, folded many times, and the stub of a pencil. Smudged writing filled the paper on both sides, but he found a blank place and printed: Peter .
    Odd. Very odd. But perhaps Peter thought Jacob was odd, as well.
    “I am sorry if I frightened you, but I was not expecting anyone to be leaning against my door. I never heard you knock because my radio is too loud . . . Was there something you wanted?” Maybe he had come to ask him to turn it down – something Jacob had tried in vain to do.
    Peter nodded shyly and pointed to the radio.
    “Heh? My radio? You would like me to turn it down, yes?” Peter shook his head vigorously – no – and made a motion like a ball player swinging a bat. He managed a flicker of a smile as he pointed to the radio again.
    “Ah. You were listening to the game.” A nod. Jacob wondered why the pantomime? Why not simply speak up? He had no patience with guessing games.
    “And so as the seventh inning comes to an end,” the announcer said, “the Brooklyn Dodgers lead by three runs.”
    Peter’s smile widened, and he held up three fingers in triumph.
    “Is that the team you like?” Again, a shy nod. Jacob didn’t have the heart to make him change the station. He would do it later himself, after the boy helped him cut off the bandages.
    Just then the door to the apartment upstairs rattled open and the sister shouted down the stairs. “Peter? Peter, where are you?”
    The boy went to the open doorway and looked up, silently waving his arms at her. Apparently he was playing his little game with everyone, not just Jacob.
    “What are you doing?” she called down to him. “You know we’re not supposed to bother Mr. Mendel.”
    Jacob was going to lose his assistant. He hurried over to the door. “Please, he is not a bother. I asked him to come inside. I need a favor.”
    She stared at Jacob for a moment, then descended the stairs silently and gracefully. She was a lovely girl, blond like her father, and she carried herself like a princess. He recalled that her name was Esther, like the queen in Scripture. She would be a beauty like her mother, no doubt. The brief memory of the children’s mother – so tightly