Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 57 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“Elka is not answering this time.” Adi dropped the phone onto a pile of towels and continued folding. “I guess I’ll try again soon.”

This was the fifth day since Noa had disappeared. Adi had returned to her own home by now, but every day she was back at Racheli’s place for a few hours, trying to make headway with her in tracking down Noa.

Racheli peeked out from the kitchen. “Yehudis, go help Adi,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable that she’s folding our laundry. Where’s Esty?”

“She’s watching Chana’le.” Adi’s face was creased with worry. “Do you think I did the wrong thing by not calling the police? I don’t think Elka can help. She just wants to settle accounts with Noa.”

“In any case, the police will tell you to first check all the other places where Noa could be before they take any action,” Racheli said. “I know how it works. A nine-year-old kid from this neighborhood once disappeared for three hours, and the police did not come before the parents called all the friends to find out if they knew anything. And that was regarding a child, not an adult like in this case.”

“What happened in the end with that boy?”

“His friends had no clue where he could be, so the police finally agreed to get involved. They eventually found the boy in Ramat Gan. He got mixed up with the bus numbers and had no money for a return trip and no phone with which to call home.”

“So maybe I should try and call a few mutual friends,” Adi remarked. She abandoned the washcloth she was folding. “Maybe Noa went to one of them or said something to one of them.”

But none of the friends she called had heard from Noa for at least half a year. Adi seemed to be the last one she had been in touch with.

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Israel Bookshop presents Chapter 56 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“She’s crazy,” Chaiky whispered, almost hypnotized. “Totally crazy.”

“Who?” Yoel drove on. Although they hadn’t discussed it, he was already halfway back to Yokne’am.

Chaiky recovered. “What would you say, Yoel, if someone with whom you are not on friendly terms—quite the opposite, actually—all of a sudden starts sending you warm messages and reminding you about your good old days together?”

“And there never were any good old days?”

“No,” she replied firmly. “She brought me a gift after Yisrael Meir was born, and we spoke for a few minutes, I guess in friendly conversation, but she’s not talking about that now. She’s talking about all the pleasant days we spent together, and the long conversations that we had, and…” She tried to remember what Miri had relayed. “And how good it was to work with me, and how intelligent I am.”

“Well, I’m sure it’s wonderful to work with you, just like I am sure that you are very intelligent.”

“Ah, yes, my completely impartial little brother. I know you are loyal to me.” Chaiky smiled. “But in all my interactions with her, she never displayed any loyalty or appreciation to me. On the contrary.”

“Is this the woman you were speaking about earlier? I’m asking you this for a reason.”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 55 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

“What’s the matter, sweetie? Why are you crying?” Rachel was pushing Yisrael Meir’s carriage around and around the dining room table. “Are you hungry? Do you want your Ima? Maybe your Abba? How about a bottle?”

But the baby didn’t seem to want anything except to cry.

“Oy!” Rachel fretted as the phone began to ring. “It must be your mother, and she’ll be very upset to hear you’re not happy. She was so glad to hear before that you were sleeping so that she could go shopping with Naomi! Isn’t it a shame?”

The phone kept ringing.

“There’s no choice,” she announced to the world. “We’ll pick up.” And she pulled the carriage over to the phone.

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 54 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

 Noa had always liked the scent of strawberries. There was something calming about it for her. When Mira Brodsky had wanted to treat her, she would look for little strawberry scented soaps for Noa to decorate her room with.

Noa clearly remembered the last soap she had received. It was big, shaped like the Eiffel Tower, and its scent was so strong that little Chaya’le had been sure that it was a giant candy and had bitten off the tip.

The bitten-off soap had accompanied Noa to the Yadovsky household, and even when she fell out of favor with them and began her many wanderings, she took it with her. When had it disappeared? It was hard for Noa to recall. It had been several years since she’d lost it, but when its scent or something similar tickled her nostrils, it evoked in Noa memories of Chaya’le wailing, “Yuck, it’s so bitter! It’s so bitter!”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 53 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Ezriel and Dina Struk left the office of Martin Weber, a noted attorney who specialized in cases that dealt with the smuggling of valuable items. His office was on the seventh floor of the Tel Aviv Towers, and they hurried toward the elevator, hoping to be able to catch the eight o’clock train to Haifa.

Ezriel summoned the elevator, but the latter seemed to be working at its own pace.

“He actually sounded encouraging,” Dina said, just to cut the silence that filled the lobby where they waited, the air between them, and the entire floor.

“Well, what does he care?” Her husband was rather somber, and not interested in smiling. “As long as he is not actively managing the case, he has no problem making promises. But I don’t know how knowledgeable he really is in Russian law. Somehow, things sounded much simpler from him than they do when Shlomo’s lawyers present them,” he said, staring at the glass wall in front of him with narrowed eyes.

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 52 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

It was early afternoon when Yoel parked his car near the community center in Yokne’am. He had popped over for a surprise visit to his sister and her children, to see how they were; maybe he’d order some pizza if he saw she hadn’t prepared lunch and they hadn’t eaten yet. But only Dovi and the baby were home, along with the girl who lived with them. There was a tantalizing aroma of something baking in the oven, and Dovi’s face was stained with ketchup, though he ran to clean it off before going back to cheder for the afternoon.

They didn’t know when Chaiky would be home, so Yoel decided to wait for her here, outside the community center. After waiting ten minutes, however, he gave up and called her.

“Chaiky, are you going to be at the community center for a while?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, sounding a bit disoriented. “Why, did you need something from me?”

“I just wanted to visit. I’m parked outside the community center now. So, should I come back another time?”

“No, no,” she said hastily, sensing that it would not be wise—or nice—to send him away after he’d made the effort to come all the way there. “The truth is that a few interesting things have happened here, and they are just telling me about them now. I’d want to hear your take on them. I’ll be out in two minutes, okay?”

“Fine,” he said, and leaned back. He wondered how long “two minutes” was, in female language.

It wasn’t as long as he’d feared. After four and a half minutes, he saw Chaiky walking down the path, Naomi’s hand tucked into hers. They climbed into his car.

“Hello, Yoel.” Chaiky’s voice was tight.

“Hi. Regards from your house—it smells delicious there, and everything was calm and quiet. Since when does Dovi go back to cheder in the afternoon?”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 51 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The woman who met Chaiky and Naomi at the library didn’t look much like Elka, although it was her. Her eyes were shifty, as if she was embarrassed to focus on Chaiky, or perhaps it wasn’t only embarrassment. Something was bothering Elka very much, and it was not only the awkwardness at unexpectedly meeting up with her dedicated employee in this library.

“I need to speak to you, Chaiky,” she said as she picked up a book from the floor. “I’ve been meaning to for two days, but it just didn’t happen yet. You see how busy I am here. Miri is trying to help me, but there are hours that I need her to be sitting at the entrance and doing other work, so I’m stuck in here.”

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Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 50 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

The windows in this stairwell were built in a very strange way—narrow and high, covered with shutters that partially blocked them. The dust that had accumulated over the years took care of blocking the rest. When the light went out suddenly, Noa found herself groping in near darkness as she made her way down to the entrance. She could not recall how exactly she’d left the house. She’d shamefacedly murmured something; Mira had nodded and halfheartedly asked how she was doing today, and offered politely to keep in touch.
But that was just it—Noa didn’t really want to keep in touch. Not after she’d discovered almost with certainty that Chaiky Struk of today was the cute Chaya’le of then. That was also why she hadn’t spent too much time apologizing—because when Mira would find out who she really was, the whole story of their disastrous parting in the past would pale in comparison to what she had done to Mira’s daughter these past few months.

Only after searching all her pockets did she remember that the new phone that she’d bought as soon as she’d arrived in Be’er Sheva was resting deep in the bottom of her bag. She’d wanted to spare it the same fate as its predecessor, which was now resting—intact or not—on the floor of that strange store next to the bus station in Tel Aviv.

She leaned on the wall of the stairwell and switched on the phone. The memory was empty of numbers, of course. She didn’t even have Adi’s number! It was a good thing she knew her grandfather’s number by heart. Keep reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 49 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

It took two days for Noa to recover from her frenzied getaway from Tel Aviv, during which time she did nothing but rest in the room she had found, in a small, cheap hotel. No one seemed to be looking for her either. After two days, she went to visit the old street, a visit that was actually the purpose of her trip south.

The street and the building remained much the same, but there were a few things that had changed. For example, the gate. Noa smiled to herself when she remembered her first encounter with this building, when she’d walked up the path and entered the stairwell with the high ceiling. Now she climbed to the top floor, and discovered that the nameplate on the door had also been replaced.

Her knocks yielded no response. She stood near the door for another minute, suddenly feeling overcome by exhaustion, and wondered if a dark-haired two-year-old, tottering on her two chubby legs, would suddenly burst out of the house. It was funny; she’d known her from age zero till about six or seven, but the image that remained etched in her memory, strong and tangible, was that of Chaya’le as a toddler. Sweet Chaya’le, who, from all the things Noa had found so hard to part with at the time in favor of Yadovsky, had been the most difficult.

The door remained locked and silent in her face, and Noa finally grasped that there was no point in standing there. As she walked back down the stairs, she wondered if Mira was still a preschool teacher. Maybe she could ask the neighbors what time Mira usually came home, and if she was even in town right then. What if Mira was out of town, or even out of the country, at the moment? If that were to be the case, she would have to come up with another plan.

She stopped near the door on the first floor, just as the sound of footsteps echoed from the entrance of the building. Someone was on the way up the stairs, and she was talking on the phone. Noa tensed. Keep Reading…

Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 48 of a new online serial novel, Night Flower, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week.  Click here for previous chapters.

Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications. 

Adi approached the desk and peered at the bag through the glass. Yes, that was Noa’s suitcase. And in case there remained any doubt, there was a fluorescent yellow swath of tape with Noa’s identifying details written on it.

“Excuse me?” she said, raising her voice, because no one seemed to be in the room.

“Yes?” An older woman stood up from behind the pile of suitcases and bags.

“Can you tell me when this suitcase was put here?”

“I can’t give you details like that,” the woman replied, clearly impatient. “We don’t just give information out to other people.”

“But the suitcase belongs to my friend who disappeared,” Adi almost pleaded. “Just tell me if it was dropped off in the last few minutes or a long time ago.”

The woman stared at her. “Neither,” she said, after a moment. “She was here about an hour and a half ago.”

“She was alone?”

“You see why I don’t like answering people?” the woman asked, and went back to her little stool in the corner of the room. “A minute ago you said I should just tell you when that suitcase was dropped off, and suddenly you have more questions.”

“Because I saw that you are nice and that you realize that I’m very upset, so I tried to get a bit more information from you.” Adi took a step back and gripped the handle of the carriage, but didn’t leave.

The woman sat down and picked up a rag that was lying on the floor next to her. She dusted off a small shelf and put two medium-sized boxes on it. Suddenly she raised her head and snapped, “She was alone. Does that make you feel better?”

“Not exactly.” Adi took a deep breath.

“Why, is she lost?” Keep Reading…