Page 41 of The Perfect Deception

She blew her nose, which was stuffy from cry­ing. “Hi.”

“Are you okay? You don’t sound like your­self.”

“It’s just al­ler­gies.” Peo­ple had win­ter ones, right? Dust, mold, non-ex­is­tent cats…

“Are you sure?” His voice was deep with con­cern.

Dina’s eyes wa­tered. “What’s up, Adam?”

“Noth­ing, I just wanted to check in with you. See how you’re do­ing.”

He’d seen her that evening. What was left to check in on? “I’m just read­ing.”

“What book?”

She picked up the one clos­est to her. It was a book she’d read more times than she could count. “Lit­tle House on the Prairie.”

“Re­ally? I re­mem­ber my teacher read­ing that to us in third grade.”

“Did you like it?”

“I was more in­ter­ested in run­ning around the play­ground than sit­ting and lis­ten­ing to a story.”

Dina smiled.

“Any­way,” he con­tin­ued, “I wanted to thank you for be­ing so for­giv­ing ear­lier.”

“It’s okay.”

“So, I was look­ing for a book to read and thought of you, my fa­vorite li­brar­ian.”

Her in­sides warmed. “Re­ally?”

“Re­ally. I thought maybe you could rec­om­mend some­thing, so…”

They talked for an hour, mov­ing from books to TV to movies. The next night he called just as she was sit­ting down to eat din­ner.

“Hey, how was your day?”

“Sad. There was a home­less woman hang­ing out in one of the read­ing rooms. I’ve seen her be­fore and I leave her alone, other than to smile, be­cause it’s a place for her to stay warm and she’s harm­less, but there was this other woman who ob­jected to her be­ing there so my boss had to make her leave. I felt re­ally bad for her.”

“I don’t un­der­stand how peo­ple can ig­nore some­one so ob­vi­ously suf­fer­ing,” Adam said. “There’s an old man near my dad’s of­fice and I give him spare change when I see him. I’ve talked to him a few times. He’s a war vet­eran. He could be any­one. Even you or me.”

Dina had swal­lowed at hear­ing this un­ex­pected side to Adam. Her chest ex­panded at his com­pas­sion. She’d moved onto the sofa, set­tling deep into the cush­ions, as they spent the rest of the evening talk­ing about vol­un­teer op­por­tu­ni­ties and pol­i­tics. This evening he’d called to tell her a funny story about a friend of his, but she was get­ting ready for tem­ple.

“I’m sorry, Adam, but I’m in a rush. Can we talk later?”

Ap­par­ently, telling Adam they were just friends made him more in­clined to, well, act like a friend and just talk to her. It was nice, but it was also hard. Be­cause the more they spoke, the more at­tached she was grow­ing—both to him as a per­son and to him as a man. He was so much deeper than he made him­self out to be. This was the Adam she ad­mired.

At least their con­ver­sa­tions were over the phone, where all she had to do was ig­nore her at­trac­tion to his husky voice, a voice that re­minded her of flan­nel and leather and the sound an en­gine makes when it’s warmed up. She’d never tell him that—he’d prob­a­bly ob­ject to be­ing com­pared to flan­nel, even if it was warm and cozy. As long as it wasn’t in per­son, at least un­til she could get her mind, her heart and her body on the same page, she’d be fine.

She fin­ished dress­ing in gray flared suit pants and an or­ange but­ton-back V-neck sweater. She put on her Jew­ish star neck­lace, hoop ear­rings, and she was set. Shrug­ging into her black pea coat and swing­ing her purse over her shoul­der, she went to tem­ple, de­ter­mined to put Adam out of her mind for now.

The chilly wind blew her hair across her face. She en­tered the foyer of the syn­a­gogue with re­lief. Shiv­er­ing, she hung her coat in the coat closet and walked into the vestibule out­side the sanc­tu­ary.

She stopped dead.

Adam.