Free All Other Nights by Dara Horn Page A

said, and curtsied. Then all of the sisters turned, as if in a choreographed ballet, and followed her out of the room.
    For a moment Jacob stood alone with their father, staring at the wallet and the bill in his hand. When he finally looked up, he saw Philip Levy watching him, with a tired grin on his face. “As I said at the door, please don’t mind any of them,” Philip said. “And do join us, if you are still willing.”
    Jacob caught his breath, and once again forced himself to smile. “Mr. Levy, it would be an honor to stay with you and your very talented family,” he said, and placed the two-dollar bill in Philip’s hand.
    Philip returned the bill to Jacob. “We can discuss it later,” he said. “For now, you are our guest. Please come with me.” And the two of them followed the girls into the dining room.
    It was a warm night in late May, very humid, and the air in the dining room was thick and full above the long table. Dusk had not quite fallen, but Lottie rose from her seat to light two lamps on either end of the room. The room seemed to gleam in the lamplight against the deepening blue that pressed against the windowpanes, the four girls’ faces glowing as they talked and laughed. Jacob watched the family around the table and marveled. He thought of the filthy camps where he had slept and eaten for most of the past year, the mud-coated tents and the vomit-stained blankets on ordinary nights, and then the choking smell of already rotting flesh on those howling twilit evenings when he had clawed his way off of battlefields, the night air riven with the long screams of those not yet dead. It suddenly seemed impossible to him that those places and this room could exist in the same world. He looked around the table at the faces of the chattering Levy daughters and imagined that this room was a sealed compartment in time and space, with an entire world contained within it—an alternative world, independent from reality, where this house with its lights and laughter and beautiful girls had somehow, impossibly, become his home. Phoebe stepped away to the kitchen and returned to pile an impressive heap of food onto his plate, roasted chicken and bright orange sweet potatoes and some sort of awful greens he had never tasted before. Except for the greens, he devoured it all with relish. He noticed Jeannie—as he had just heard her sisters calling her—watching him from across the table. When he glanced up at her, she flashed a smile at him, as though they were sharing a secret. Jacob tried to smile back at her, but didn’t quite succeed. Sweat dripped beneath his collar as he put down his fork, wary of what might happen next.
    “So I don’t imagine you’ve seen combat, as a supplier to the camps,” Philip said, after swallowing a mouthful of potatoes. “A lucky thing.”
    “Yes, very lucky,” Jacob agreed, and wished he had been that lucky. Aside from the heavy odor of the food, the room had a sweet scent, he noticed. It was a smell he associated with girls his age—a slight, aching smell, like fruit not yet ripened. He wondered if a man like Philip, living in a house full of girls, would still notice that smell.
    “The wounded are everywhere. They are difficult to ignore, much though we might wish they would disappear,” Philip said.
    “Did you ever see anyone really injured in the camps, Mr. Rappaport?” Jeannie suddenly asked.
    Jacob was still embarrassed to look at her, but he remembered the mission and forced a smile. She leaned forward, and a lock of dark hair fell loose over her forehead, dangling just above her eye like a curtain waiting to be drawn open. His supreme embarrassment did not erase the fact that she was incredibly beautiful.
    “Unfortunately, yes,” he said, more truthfully than he would have liked.
    Jeannie raised her narrow eyebrows, brushing the lose curl aside. “Really quite badly injured?” she asked.
    He paused as he watched her, confused. She seemed genuinely