The Yiddish Gangster's Daughter (A Becks Ruchinsky Mystery Book 1) by Joan Cochran (popular books of all time .txt) 📗

be fine. No thanks to you.” I reach for my cart. “I don’t want to have this conversation. I can’t let it go. I don’t know that I ever will.”

I walk away with as much dignity as I can muster in shorts that bunch between my thighs and a grocery cart that squeaks like a trapped mouse. When I pull into line for a register, he’s standing with the plastic produce bag at his side.

Yeah. I feel the tiniest bit sorry for him. But mostly I hope he enjoys his sour apples.

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9

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It’s Friday morning and I’ve come to the conclusion that if I read another recipe for matzo ball soup, I’ll be sick. I’ve been through more than fifty cookbooks and internet searches and come up with nothing. You can prepare matzo balls with chicken fat or vegetable oil. Leave them in the refrigerator for twenty minutes or overnight. Add leeks or flanken to flavor the broth. It’s old news to me. You’d think that after centuries of making the golf ball-sized dumplings, somebody would come up with a new spin.

Tradition.

I don’t think my editor’s going to accept that excuse. My article’s due in a week and I spent so much time with my sons during their visit that I’m behind on my work. Gabe drove up from Miami Monday morning, picking Josh up from the Ft. Lauderdale airport. It was the first time I saw either of them since Daniel’s and my split. I’d hoped they could stay through Saturday and Sunday, but both had plans—a fraternity party for Josh and a paper for Gabe.

They asked about the breakup as soon as they entered the house, hugging me and asking if I was okay. Daniel and I have raised great boys. Both offered to run errands and do repairs around the house. Over lunch Monday, Josh admitted he was horrified by his father’s affair. When he asked if I’d take Daniel back, I shrugged and told him it was too early to tell. Why cause the boys more worry?

We spent a few days relaxing around the house, hanging out at the mall and eating at their favorite burger restaurant. The boys slept late every morning, leaving me time to bake them chocolate chip cookies to take back to school.

Though upset with their father, they agreed to join him for breakfast Wednesday. When they got home. Josh told me his father made a point of telling them Dawn no longer worked for him. I should have been relieved, but didn’t feel much of anything. Dawn’s disappearance from Daniel’s life does nothing to ease the sting of his betrayal. Naturally, I didn’t go into that with Josh or Gabe.

I threw together a barbecue Wednesday night and Tootsie surprised me by agreeing to come—something he rarely does. Josh drove down to Miami to get him and it was nice being with family. But the table felt incomplete, a chessboard missing its king, without Daniel and his silly jokes.

“So how’re you boys taking the split?” Tootsie asked once we were seated at the picnic table on the back patio. Josh, who’s become quite a cook since leaving for college, brought the London broil he’d grilled to the table.

Gabe exchanged a glance with his brother. “Okay, I guess.”

“Your mom tell you what happened?”

“About Dad cheating?”

“What else? Maybe you boys can talk some sense into her.”

“Dad, will you drop it?” I was tossing the salad and sent a few lettuce leaves flying onto the table.

Tootsie ignored me. “What your father did was stupid. But your mother’s stubborn. She won’t listen to me when I tell her to get over it. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”

Josh winced. “That’s kind of up to Mom and Dad, isn’t it?”

I wanted to hug him. He sounded so mature.

“It affects you too.”

Josh shrugged and slid several slices of steak, pink in the center and cut perfectly across the grain, onto Tootsie’s plate. “We’re fine.” He set his jaw in a line that was so similar to my father’s expression of anger that I wanted to laugh. Tootsie let the subject go.

At any rate, this morning I call a dozen synagogues looking for Rosh Hashanah recipes that date back to Florida’s pioneer days. They have plenty of cookbooks in their libraries and sisterhood stores. But nothing historic. Or what I’d call historic.

One of the younger librarians I phone ticks me off.

“You called the right place,” she says after I explain I’m seeking holiday recipes by early settlers. “Temple Shalom has the best Jewish cookery collection in town and I’m sure we have recipes from early settlers. Let me put you on hold while I look.”

I wait, envisioning her thumbing through a series of ragged tomes, their bindings barely intact, as she searches for a yellowed scrapbook of treasured recipes.

When she returns to the phone, her voice is bright with excitement. “I think I have what you’re looking for. It’s a sisterhood cookbook dating back to the midcentury. Here. It says nineteen sixty. You should find some historic recipes in this.”

I don’t tell her that’s the year I was born. Or slam the phone into the receiver. Instead, with my usual ladylike restraint, I say thanks, I’ll get back to you. Then I glance in the mirror on the wall in the dining room, now my office, to reassure myself I’m not an early Jewish settler.

Well, maybe I am.

So I’ve driven back to the cultural center, this time to search the library’s cookbooks and, to be honest, look further into my father’s past. I was too shocked to go to the library after my visit to the museum a week earlier. But the main library has an impressive collection of books and documents on Florida. I figure if I can’t find the recipes I need here, I might as well accept that any records of what my foremothers cooked were swept away in a hurricane.

The garage’s stairwell is free of sleeping men today, although a dozen characters in shabby clothing slouch