The Others by Sarah Blau (e reader for manga txt) 📕

fact that she was murdered the very same sick way Dina was murdered, that makes sense to you?!

Eli opens his mouth to say something and pauses, but I can tell by his expression that it’s something important. I wait with an expectant gaze, knowing from experience that if I just sit here quietly long enough, he’ll eventually tell me everything. But minutes go by and he isn’t saying a word. And when a few more minutes pass, I see he’s fallen asleep.

He looks soft and vulnerable like a baby, and I resist the overwhelming urge to hug him.

And once again I find myself standing and staring at The Witch of Endor.

The painting is right in front of me, hung at eye-level, as in every apartment I’ve ever lived in, always at eye-level, so I can see it whenever I feel a moment’s weakness. And so she can see you. The Flemish painter decided to merge the Witch of Endor’s image with that of your commonplace European witch. The result: dark, fierce biblical eyes with a pointy witch hat.

Help me, I plead to her voicelessly, help me like you helped me back then. She gazes at me with those dark, lashless eyes, identical to the eyes of the painted Lilith in Ronit’s bathroom and the painted Miriam in Dina’s study, and a small part of my brain remembers that the same eyes used to hang in Naama’s room.

The images loop through my mind, four young women, billowing capes, toasting wine glasses. To us! The wine splashes against the rims, our cheeks flushed pink, Ronit raises her thin white arm, sashaying on the grass, forever young, the beautiful Ronit! Our mouths are chanting the same old tune: Forever four, never less, never more!

Now I’m the sole survivor.

13

I WAKE UP bright and early and can’t move, it feels like someone has nailed me to the bed by hammering needles into my spine. I’ve experienced back pain before, but never anything like this.

While trying to prop myself into a sitting position, a deep, ugly moan escapes my mouth, Watch out, Sheila, that’s an old lady’s moan. I mourn the twenty-year-old girl I used to be, gone forever.

Somewhere in the apartment my phone is ringing, but I don’t care, the thoughts swirling inside me are bitter and black, and I know that if I want to stay alive, I’d better expel them from my mind, but I can’t.

My phone is ringing again, and this time I manage to pull myself up, but when I finally get to it, the ringing has stopped. When I see who called, I don’t know whether to be happy or worried, but my hand is already reaching out to dial.

“Debby and Saul were less than impressed by you,” Micha says, brisk and matter-of-fact. So, Shorty’s name is Debby. Sounds about right, it’s a short woman’s name.

“And where have you been?” I ask.

“The investigation has expanded, so they had to put more people on it,” he says, before pausing for a moment. “But here I am.”

“They really think I did it?” My back starts throbbing again.

“What do you say I come over and we talk for a bit?”

“When?” I quake, but after a few seconds of blaring silence, I realize he has already hung up.

This time I have nothing to hide. All the boxes have been unpacked, and as I’ve mentioned, he’s already seen my Witch of Endor. Yes, this time he’ll walk into a (relatively) tidy apartment, with clean bowls, filled with cookies that weren’t bought at that awful grocery store down the street. The only problem is that my aching back is making me drag myself around the apartment with stooped, elderly caution. Really? You think that’s your problem? Not the fact that all the others have died? That you’re the only one left standing?

And here he is, at my door, standing in front of me, with that dimple and bright eyes, those flexible limbs, only this time my heart skips no beats. When you’re fighting for your life, passion is the casualty.

“Are you aware that you are very much a suspect?” He sits in front of me, waving away the (spotless!) bowl of cookies I placed in front of him. If you must carry yourself like a bent old lady, at least be a good hostess.

“Do you think I’m a suspect?”

I don’t care for his silence.

“We’ve already covered this!” I shrill with a voice so loud it bounces off the walls. “It was someone who didn’t like Dina’s anti-birth agenda, and whacked her, and now Ronit, the same exact thing! Another woman who didn’t want to be a mother ends up with a baby glued to her hands!”

Drifting into my mind is the image of a twenty-year-old Ronit, forever twenty. She’s holding a brand-new baby doll, fresh out of its box, and hands it to me. I take it and smile at her, and we both share a knowing giggle, while Dina stares at us from a distance. But now Ronit is also far away… very far away. You’re the only one left. And you don’t dare utter the other possibility aloud.

“Are you sure about that?” His voice is sharp and tight.

“About what?”

“That she and Dina felt the same way about motherhood?”

“Haven’t you read all the interviews they did with her?” And all the ones they didn’t.

“Yes, we read them,” he says. I don’t like this we. I picture him with Shorty and Froggy, analysing the evidence with solemn expressions. “Yes, Ronit Akiva was certainly outspoken against having children,” Froggy would state while the three pored over newspaper clippings. Newspaper clippings, really? Everything’s online today! You don’t only move like an eighty-year-old, you think like one.

I remember one of Ronit’s very first interviews. It was after she had a supporting role in some trite, uninspired TV drama, but the interview she gave was anything but dull, including statements such as: “I have no intention of becoming a reproductive assembly line, I have far