“Just what?” he asked, squeezing her hand.
His daughter swallowed. “When Mama and Oma were here, I—” She bit her lip once more.
“You what?” he prodded as gently as he could.
“I was Mama’s special little princess,” Fannie sobbed, falling back into his arms.
Roger’s heart squeezed. His daughter was still truly very young, and it had barely been a year since his wife’s and mother-in-law’s deaths.
A memory rose in his mind, of himself at eleven, standing alongside his brothers at Bevis Marks reciting Kaddish for their father. Every day for the full eleven months a child grieved a parent.
Swallowing, he turned back to his daughter.
“She loved you very much,” he told her, stroking her back again. “So did Oma.”
“You don’t,” she accused, a tear rolling down her flushed cheek. “You love Michael.” She sniffed a little, her expression cross, despite her wet eyes. “I hate him.” Her voice shook.
“I love you both,” Roger said firmly, taking out a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing her eyes. “And you don’t hate your brother.”
“I do,” Fannie insisted, pouting a little.
“You don’t,” he repeated. “He might frustrate you, and you may occasionally be jealous of him. God knows I’ve been of all three of my siblings, but in the end, they’re the people who know you the best, know who you truly are.” His voice cracked. Maria’s avoidance, Louis’s rage, and David’s disappointment. Oh, how he wished that matters could’ve been different between them all.
“What’s the matter, Papa?” Fannie asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head, staring down at his daughter. While it might be too late for his relations with his siblings, it was not too late for his children’s relations with each other. And hopefully not for his with them.
He took a deep breath. “I just miss your uncle Louis sometimes. And Aunt Maria, as she’s so busy in Kent. And I worry that I’ve displeased your uncle David,” he admitted, pulling her close again, “and that I haven’t shown you I love you well enough.”
“Truly?” she asked, pushing back and staring up at him, searching his face with suspicion. Guilt squeezed his gut.
“Yes.” He pulled her closer. “I love you, Fannie. Very much.”
“Even if I made you angry and made people mad at us?” his daughter asked, her long lashes still wet.
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, pushing her hair behind her ears. “However, I happen to know that your mother was right. You are very special.”
She cocked her head. “How?”
“You’re a Berab,” he told her, rising to his feet, his lips twitching a touch as he pictured Rebecca’s eye roll. But damn it, it was true. They might not be perfect, but they were special. He set his daughter down on the ground. “Do you know what that means?”
“What?” she asked, taking his large hand in her small one.
“That means you were born to lead the Jewish people by example,” he explained. Which is what he should’ve been doing.
Fannie’s brow furrowed. “How do I do that?”
Damned if he knew. The gentile world merely tolerated him for his money and ability to flatter, while their community, well… It certainly didn’t respect him. No, everyone, with the exception of Sol, and possibly his own family, either wanted to supplant him or for him to go away.
Well, not go away. They just… Roger squinted as he attempted to put into words the way people like Aaron Ellenberg looked at him.
And Miss Adler.
Or the overwhelming sense of something akin to shame he felt when he had to explain to her that he spent hours translating Greek and French and Latin but never bothered with any of the volumes in Hebrew.
Or how many excuses he made to hide every ritual that could mark him as a Jew when gentiles were around.
Or how he’d mumbled his prayers after meals so much, he no longer remembered the actual words.
