After the Wolf Bites (eBook)
308 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-2436-5 (ISBN)
Once upon a time, a nice Jewish girl from New Jersey raised her daughter as a single parent, earned a teaching degree, married her Prince Charming, and moved to a mountain lake in the middle of nowhere to live out her dream of becoming a writer. Her name was Mimi Rosen. The End.
When Esti Mensch meets Mark Gassler at her mother's engagement party, she never expected to fall in love. Ignoring all the warning signs, Esti becomes pregnant with Mark's baby and agrees to marry him. However, on the eve of their wedding, Esti discovers that Mark may be linked to his ex-girlfriend's disappearance. She decides to confront him, but Mark eases her worries by stating that he was wrongfully accused, and convinces Esti to go ahead with their marriage. After their son is born, Esti begins to suspect that the accusations against Mark were true, and she decides she wants to divorce. However, in an attempt to control her, Mark convinces everyone that Esti is having a mental breakdown. Determined to prove herself as sane, Esti contacts a reporter who had investigated Mark's ex-girlfriends' disappearance, who informed her that Mark was likely involved in not only his ex-girlfriends' disappearance but also a series of other murders and cover-ups involving an attorney of a cabal of old-money millionaires. Eventually, Esti uncovers evidence that proves Mark is a serial killer and tries to help the reporter expose him, but her attempt backfires and lands her in jail. With the help of a detective and a fellow inmate, Esti is able to escape Mark's corrupting influence and attempts to reunite with her son, whom she had hidden before embarking down this dangerous path. But after three years apart, she had begun to doubt taking her child from the family who had been raising him. Esti must now face a painful choice: reclaim her son or leave him with the only family he's ever known.
MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER,
WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?
MARK
DECEMBER 2003
I pushed through the double doors into Temple Bet Shalom’s multipurpose room, stepping back in time to the Borscht Belt of the 1960s. A whiff of Manischewitz wine hit my nostrils. The roomful of Jackie Masons and Fanny Brices schmoozing over deli closed in around me. The ghosts of my Bar Mitzvah past rolled through my brain like a Polanski film. In retrospect, I should have taken that as a bad sign.
A rabbi with a white Freud beard and old-fashioned spectacles made his way to me. “Good Shabbas,” he said. “I’m Rabbi Melcer. Are you a friend of Jack’s or Freida’s?”
Another haunting memory rolled. This time of my Bar Mitzvah, and the rabbi who’d prepared me for it, Rabbi Kahane. My growling side stirred.
“I’m Mark Gassler,” I said. “Jack’s an old friend of my mother’s.” I pointed to you clacking over in stilettos.
“Finally, you came,” you announced in Ukrainian-accented English.
“Hi, Mom.” I braced for your craning kiss.
You batted eyes at the rabbi, then said to me, “You should have been here earlier. Rabbi Melcer gave such a meaningful Dvar Torah.”
“Sorry, I missed your sermon, Rabbi.” I wasn’t sorry.
“My son needed his rest. He’s an important businessman. In Manhattan.”
The rabbi directed me to three long tables of deli and salads before moving on. You waited for him to leave, then whipped me with the back of your hand. “You’re late,” you said. Your onyx ring caught my leather jacket sleeve. I’d hardly felt it. And yet, I flinched.
“You expected me to sit through services?”
“When you come through a door, you have to put on the right face. Haven’t I always told you that?”
You must have known how much I hated being told what to do, especially when it was you doing the telling. But that didn’t stop you from imparting your pearls of wisdom to me. You could have written an unwanted advice column, Kibitzing Golda.
You handed me a velvety blue yamukah that I put on my head.
“Who am I trying to impress this time?” I asked.
“Jack’s future stepdaughter.” You pointed to the far end of the crowd, where a perky brunette in a tasteful pink suit sat with her legs dangling off a stage. Seated next to her was a guy in a hand-me-down suit with a Jew-fro and mustache. The brunette leaned in adoringly and said something to him. They folded into each other, laughing.
You nudged me. “She’s pretty, no?”
I shrugged.
“She’s single,” you said, with a calculating smile.
“Is that why you pestered me into coming here?”
“I didn’t pester.”
“No?” I scoffed.
“Fine. I may have mentioned it once or twice.”
Jack’s future stepdaughter put her head on Curly’s shoulder. She had a tight body and a rosy complexion that did nothing for me. I preferred heroin chic.
“Anyone but Mackenzie, right?” I said, through gnashed teeth.
“Stop that. I never told you what to do.”
“In what reality?” I resided in the one where you constantly told me what to do, especially about Mackenzie.
Jack moseyed over to the couple. Curly jumped down and warmly greeted him.
“Who’s the guy?” I asked.
“It’s nothing. They’re coming. You’ll talk to her.”
“Crap.”
Jack sauntered to us with his new family, led by the soon-to-be Mrs. Jack Landsbaum. She introduced herself as Freida Mensch. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said to me. “Jack’s told me so much about you.”
“Should I be nervous?” I teased.
“According to Jack, only God himself has a better character.” Freida had an infectious laugh, which got everyone smiling. She introduced me to her son, Ari, a beanpole in a Brooks Brothers suit with a trimmed black beard. He and his dumpy wife were hand in hand with two well-dressed little girls whom Freida smothered in kisses before presenting the perky brunette. “And this is my daughter, Esti.”
You elbowed me. “Didn’t I tell you she was beautiful?”
Esti blushed.
“Mark works in Manhattan,” Freida said.
“Doing what?” Esti asked.
I opened my mouth to tell her.
“He sells timeshares,” you said, cutting me off and setting my teeth on edge. “It’s a family business. Very successful.”
Esti flashed a dimpled grin. “Try to get a word in. I dare ya.”
“Esti lived in Israel for three years,” you said. “She was in the Israeli army.”
Curly came over. Esti introduced him as Eli Weissman. “I’m taking off,” he told her.
“Wait, Eli. I’ll walk with you.” She gave her apologies and left.
Jack pulled me aside. “Are you worried about the boyfriend?”
“I’m not worried about anything, Jack,” I said, watching the white-bearded rabbi schmooze.
“Good. Because he’s just a piece of meat with eyes.”
I pictured Jack in his capo days, more feared than the Nazis in the Ukrainian shtetl you and he once called home. Given his buried sins, you would have made a better match for him than Freida. If only you hadn’t laughed in his face when he proposed.
“You could win her over,” Jack said. “It would please your mother.”
His herring and schnapps breath stirred my growling side.
“Congratulations on your engagement, Jack.” I reached into my jacket pocket for my car keys and headed for the door.
***
ESTI
Two weeks after I’d met Mark Gassler, a scandal like no other hit Union’s Jewish community. I remember it so clearly, coming home, happy and oblivious, thinking it was like every other day. But looking back, the day the news came out about Rabbi Melcer was the day my nightmare started, only I didn’t know it.
I parked my little dented Corolla on the street next to our house on FDR Drive, just like I always did. I grabbed my college textbooks off the front passenger’s seat—Algebra I, Introduction to Child Psychology, and The Elements of Journalism—and took the walkway up to the back door. It had snowed earlier, but the sun had finally broken through, melting the ice, which dripped like tears from the clothes line my dad had strung between two oaks. The bare branches on the cherry tree he’d planted from a sprig dripped too. Every time I looked at that tree, my heart hurt from missing my dad.
I came in through the laundry room, greeted by the sweet aroma of sizzling onions and the sounds of bouncy Yiddish folk songs playing upstairs. Freida hurried out of the kitchen, carrying a dishtowel, a knife, and a stalk of celery, her dyed blond hair shellacked for Shabbas. She looked down the stairwell as I came up. She wore a flowery housedress and slippers. The look of terrible news creased her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You’re late.”
“I had to stay after class to talk to my professor. I told you.”
“Dinner’s practically cooked.” She shuffled back into the kitchen.
I put my books on the record cabinet near the front door, where an album from my parents’ Werbler Family collection played—cherabum, cherabum, cherabum bum bum bum bum. I pictured my dad working at his sewing machine in the tailor’s shop, singing along with that quintet of adults and children who’d harmonized so beautifully. Boy, did Dad ever love The Werblers!
I went into the kitchen, grabbed some salad fixings from the fridge, carried them to the double sink, and began checking the lettuce for bugs and washing it. Freida stood at the stove with her back to me, stirring a big pot of soup. After a long silence, I repeated a question I’d asked every Friday since Eli and I had started dating. “Can Eli join us for Shabbas dinner?”
Freida’s answer never changed. “The guitar player?”
“He’s a music teacher, Ma. I told you that.”
“Golda and Mark are coming.”
“Jack’s friends? Great. Eli can come, too.”
“Another time. Maybe.”
She’d never approved of Eli, or any of my boyfriends, for that matter. In my mind, this was why I’d unconsciously sabotaged every romantic relationship I’d ever had; a chronic condition I referred to as: The Freida Effect.
“Why don’t you like Eli?”
“Who says I don’t like him?”
“I’ve been dating him for nearly two years. We haven’t had him for Shabbas dinner once.”
She shrugged.
“He was nice to us when Dad died,” I said. “Remember?”
She huffed. “Nice doesn’t mean you marry him.”
“Marry him? Who said I’m—”
“Shh. You’re not getting younger.”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“I’m just saying, it’s time you looked for someone serious.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Go set the table. I’m upset enough today.”
“Over Eli?”
“Over Rabbi Melcer.” She pointed to The Jersey Post on the dining room table, next to her silver candelabra. Under a somber photo of our rabbi with his white beard and old-style eyeglasses, the headline read: Rumors about Respected...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 15.12.2025 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8-3178-2436-5 / 9798317824365 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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