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sneak.”
    “So much for me trying to be nice,” Matthew mumbled. He reached back into the
    closet and pulled out a box. “Do you want to explain to everyone what this is doing here,
    then?”
    I didn’t recognize it at first -- it hadn’t been mine for very long, and it was far from
    being a treasured possession -- but my mother recognized it instantly.
    “That’s Jonah’s fondue set!” she gasped.
    “I found it in Mother’s bag,” Matthew admitted. He shook his head. “Honestly, Mom,
    you really need to stop hiding things.”
    “I thought it was mine,” Aunt Goldie said.
    “It says ‘To Jonah’ on it!” my mother cried.
    We stood around awkwardly until Uncle Al threw down the broom and lunged into
    the closet to search the rest of Goldie’s belongings.
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    67
    We did indeed discover that my aunt was something of a klepto. Along with my new
    fondue set, she had also acquired Rachel’s lip balm, one my mother’s knitting needles, a
    cheese grater from the kitchen, and Ethan’s stethoscope.
    But a thorough search revealed no pushke. At this point, my poor aunt was crying,
    shaking her head. “I don’t know how these things get into my bag, honestly! I just looked at
    them. The grater is such a pleasing shape!”
    I felt bad for her. We all acknowledged that Goldie was senile, but the others seemed
    reluctant to respect the less than amusing sides of her disability. When Uncle Al finished
    searching every square inch of the room, he left, as did the rest of the crowd, to find
    breakfast or light new candles, because the power was still out.
    I stayed behind, sitting on the edge of my aunt’s bed, and tried to cheer her up.
    “It’s okay, Aunt Goldie,” I told her, patting her wrinkled hand. “You can have the
    fondue set.”
    “I don’t even want it, that’s the problem,” she said tearfully. “I don’t mean to be the
    way I am! I just forget that I have a hold of things. And then I forget they aren’t mine, and I
    put them places. And then I forget I put them there.”
    “Don’t worry about it. It happens to everyone. It happens to me occasionally, and I’m a
    third your age.”
    Goldie sniffed, and then patted my hand back. “You were always a kind boy, Jonah.
    You’ve got goodness deep inside you.”
    I smiled. Goldie looked around confusedly. “But I don’t know where I put my glasses.”
    “You’re wearing them.” I adjusted them for her.
    “Is Matthew all right?” she asked quietly.
    “Even if Uncle Al got him with the broom, I doubt he did more than brush him clean.”
    “And Moe?”
    “Uncle Moe’s dead, Aunt Goldie.”
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    Astrid Amara
    “Oh. That’s right. I always forget.” She looked down at our clasped hands, appearing on
    the verge of tears. “It’s hard to remember the things we don’t want to.”
    I wished I could say the same. But it seemed like my head was filled with all the
    poisonous memories that ate away at my confidence and my beliefs in those around me.
    Even now, with Ethan’s release dried on my skin, the taste of his skin fresh in my mouth, I
    could conjure half a dozen insults and bad memories in a moment. It wasn’t easy to forge a
    new future on such a rocky, untrustworthy past.
    “I don’t want everyone to be angry at me,” Goldie said quietly.
    “They aren’t,” I assured her. “They were simply startled.” I could tell my aunt was still
    agitated though. Recalling that she used to love playing dreidel with us kids when we were
    younger, I fetched our old wooden dreidel and the candied gelt from last night’s dinner and
    brought them upstairs.
    The playing surface wasn’t ideal; Goldie sat in her nightgown and bathrobe, hidden
    under a mountain of bedsheets. Our breaths were visible in the freezing morning air. But I
    laid volume E of an ancient encyclopedia set between us on the bed and we used that as the
    surface as we spun.
    I had only fetched two bags of chocolate gelt. Aunt Goldie spun the gimel