Page 8 of In Just a Year
He hurried inside, set Joseph down, and shut the door behind him. With a pat of his pocket, he made sure the dreidel was still there. Good. But what was going on here?
With colorful scarves wrapped around their waists, the little girls swirled around.
“She’s coming!” Simon, one of Esther’s younger twin brothers called. “Ahh!”
From behind the puppet theatre came none less than Esther, black hair tied into several ponytails emerging from her head like tentacles.
Ben suppressed a laugh. She’d always loved playing Medusa and chasing the little ones until they fell to the floor laughing.
“Perseus, save us!” Little Simon shouted at Ben.
“Am I Perseus today?” He laughed. It wasn’t often that he got to be the slayer. Usually, one of the little ones had the honor.
“You must, before the nymphs get us and we drown in the pond!” Joseph called when the little girls danced around him and laid a blue pillow on the ground.
“Step in the water, go on!” they sang in a dissonant singsong.
Little Joseph pretended to drown as he knelt on the pillow.
Esther waved her hands, pinched her lips shut, cast Ben a commiserating look.
Alright, Ben thought. Why not, for old time’s sake? He pulled a wooden sword from the bucket by the door, the same spot where they’d been when Fave and Arnold were little, and Ben and his brothers played in this same nursery with them.
“Attack!” he shouted.
Esther squealed and ran off screaming.
CHAPTER4
They must have played for over an hour because Esther felt flushed and exhausted. The children had chased her, and Ben as Perseus had pretended to be a rather clumsy slayer of Medusa to prolong the charade. Pillows had been scattered around the nursery, shawls flung over chairs, and a sparkling chain of glass beads lay broken.
Ben’s elegant white shirt was now untucked and wrinkled. His cream breeches stretched over his muscular legs and his behind. He’d always looked good, but since his return from his first year of studies in Edinburgh, he’d changed. Bulkier than before, he filled his coat in a pleasing way. Although he was no taller than when he’d left, he looked bigger and stronger. Raphi had once told Esther that Ben climbed the cliffs in Scotland and dove into the cold water. Surely it was dangerous but also a most rewarding athletic endeavor.
Oh, her younger twin brothers almost caught her when she eyed Ben from behind, indulging in the sight of his perfect masculine form.
She shook her head, it wasn’t allowed. This was Ben Klonimus, after all, Pavel’s son! Pavel had been there the day her mother had died. He’d been there every day since, as had Chawa. They helped father with anything he needed. More than once, Chawa had slept at their house when father had to stay with congregants when one of their family members was on the deathbed. Pavel and Chawa Klonimus always kept an eye on the Solomon children. Esther thought of Pavel asUnclePavel. He was certainly there for her as if they were family.
Father let her go to the Klonimuses whenever Raphi had time to give her piano lessons. Since Raphi had married Laila and moved back to London, he worked at the Klonimus workshop with his brothers. Esther went after dinner as often as she could, and Raphi always gave her an hour lesson on his grand piano in his parents’ parlor before he went home to Laila and Joseph.
Sometimes, Gideon brought Esther home in his carriage when he was returning to Rosie, but during his extended honeymoon in Italy, Arnold had come to pick Esther up and drive her home in his phaeton. Arnold was her brother-in-law, the dashing husband of her older sister, Hannah. Everybody looked after Esther. Everyone loved her. And in return, Esther looked after her siblings. Now that she was out of the schoolroom, there wasn’t much else to do.
“She’s upstairs,” Ephraim, her little twin brother said to the other twin, Simon. “She’s hiding from us.”
“Let’s go and find her!” Raphi and Laila’s son Joseph said.
“Perseus, that way!” Simon shouted.
A door clicked shut. Silence. The children were gone.
Esther turned the corner and entered the nursery from the bathroom door.
Good, nobody was there. Game over.
She started to untie her hair and shook her head as she plopped onto the pile of pillows the girls had left behind the puppet theatre’s folding façade.
“Ouch!” She’d landed on a foot. “Perseus?”
Ben gave her a boyish smile and pulled the cravat out from his collar. “Just me, I’m afraid.” He looked flushed and his dense hairline glistened with the sweat from their playtime.
