Page 86 of The Perfect Deception

“Hey, re­lax,” Cheryl said, reach­ing for her hand. “We’ll pay her back, don’t worry.”

Cheryl spent the rest of din­ner dis­cussing all the ways she’d paid back dif­fer­ent peo­ple who had wronged her—her mother for be­ing un­in­volved in her life and whom she now re­fused to visit; her ex-boyfriend who’d cheated on her and whose cur­rent girl­friend she mailed old pho­tos to; her old boss, for whom she’d moved around all kinds of files when he’d let her go; and of course, Ash­ley.

By the time Dina left, she was in des­per­ate need of a shower. She didn’t want to be as spite­ful as Cheryl and she had no de­sire to con­tinue any kind of a re­la­tion­ship with her. But if she passed along this in­for­ma­tion, she’d prob­a­bly have to see Cheryl again to ob­tain proof or some­thing. And would she seem like she couldn’t let Adam go by bring­ing this in­for­ma­tion to his at­ten­tion? Would she be show­ing him how much his ac­cu­sa­tions hurt her and would that be the as­sumed mo­ti­va­tion?

What­ever Dina had ex­pected her rabbi’s of­fice to look like, it wasn’t this. Pale grey walls with bright white trim, a large win­dow with multi-col­ored beads in­stead of cur­tains, and a glass topped chrome ta­ble in­stead of a desk. White book­shelves cov­ered two of the four walls and were filled with Ju­daica books, mod­ern text­books and a va­ri­ety of other books Dina was itch­ing to ex­plore. In­ter­spersed with the books were mod­ern art paint­ings and black and white pho­to­graphs of Is­rael. The one free wall fea­tured col­or­ful Jew­ish prints and her rab­bini­cal or­di­na­tion cer­tifi­cates. The over­all ef­fect was one of friend­li­ness and ap­proach­a­bil­ity, which shouldn’t have sur­prised her at all. Be­cause the rabbi was friendly and ap­proach­able, which was why Dina had re­quested a meet­ing with her.

Only now, with the prospect of hav­ing to dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion, Dina was hav­ing sec­ond thoughts. She sat on one of the two rasp­berry col­ored leather chairs and clasped her hands to­gether to keep them from trem­bling.

“It’s so nice to see you, Dina,” Rabbi Ack­er­man said, lean­ing for­ward and smil­ing at her. “And I wanted to thank you for the book rec­om­men­da­tion you gave me Fri­day night. I or­dered it on Sun­day and started read­ing it yes­ter­day. It’s ex­cel­lent!”

Dina’s face warmed and her hands stilled. “I’m glad you’re en­joy­ing it. You know, if any­one ever wants to start a book club at the tem­ple, I’d be happy to help.”

“That would be won­der­ful. But I don’t think that’s the rea­son you wanted to talk to me to­day.”

Dina gripped her knees be­fore forc­ing her­self to re­lax. “No, it’s not. I have a dilemma I was hop­ing you might be able to help me with.” She out­lined what hap­pened with Adam, be­ing care­ful not to name names, and fin­ished with her con­ver­sa­tion with Cheryl.

“My prob­lem is I don’t know what to do with the in­for­ma­tion.”

“Why not?” the rabbi asked.

“Be­cause Adam and I aren’t to­gether any­more and hon­estly, af­ter the way he treated me, I don’t want any­thing to do with him.”

“I can un­der­stand that, Dina. But you know in­for­ma­tion that will help clear his name.”

“He’s not un­der ar­rest and be­lieve me, these women are so gos­sipy, that in­for­ma­tion will get back to him any­way.”

“Then why are you here?”

Dina shrugged. “I guess I feel guilty do­ing noth­ing. I don’t want to be spite­ful, but I don’t want to come across as this des­per­ate girl try­ing to get back to­gether with him.”

“Do you re­ally think he’d take it that way?”

“I don’t know. Women throw them­selves at him all the time.”

“Did you?”

Dina’s mouth dropped. “No. If any­thing, I tried to avoid him.”

“And yet he still went out with you.”

Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away. “It doesn’t mat­ter now.”

The rabbi nod­ded sym­pa­thet­i­cally. “Look, I sus­pect you have plenty of girl­friends who can give you re­la­tion­ship ad­vice. How about I give you ad­vice from a Jew­ish per­spec­tive. I am a rabbi, af­ter all.” She winked at Dina.

For the first time since she walked into the rabbi’s of­fice, Dina re­laxed.

“In Deuteron­omy, it tells us ‘Right­eous­ness, right­eous­ness you shall pur­sue.’ Be­cause the word ‘right­eous­ness’ is re­peated, some say that we may not use un­just meth­ods in pur­suit of a just cause. Kind of like the end doesn’t jus­tify the means.”

“So leav­ing it to oth­ers to al­low word to fil­ter back to Adam would be wrong?” Dina asked.

In­stead of an­swer­ing, the rabbi con­tin­ued. “There’s an­other story, in Leviti­cus, where Moses chas­tises Aaron for not fol­low­ing his in­struc­tions. Aaron sug­gests that per­haps Moses didn’t quite un­der­stand what God told him, and Moses agreed that Aaron could be right. When we study this text, Moses ad­mit­ting he might be wrong is huge, be­cause if he’s mis­in­ter­preted God’s words here, where else might he have done so? By ad­mit­ting he’s not per­fect, he’s giv­ing the He­brews an op­por­tu­nity to go against him. But Moses re­al­izes that his duty is to tell the truth.”

“So I have to tell him.”

“I think you do. And I think you knew that deep down.”

Dina sighed. “I did. I just kept hop­ing there was a way around it.”