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From Fire into Fire: The Beginning of the Story (Isaac's House) (Volume 1)

By Normandie Fischer

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1 Meira

“Allahu Akbar!”
The madman’s cry flashed into memory, and Meira saw again the knife-wielder who’d proclaimed his god greater than all others. He’d pounced, his face so close to hers that his spittle had dripped down her cheek. But he’d missed his mark, and she, though scarred, had lived.
What she and David planned to do today brought into full relief all that had happened sixteen years ago, along with the fear that hearing their truth would leave indelible scars on their son.
Here in rural New York, gulls screeched over the placid lake, and the sun angled its way into day. She pressed her bare feet against the porch floorboards to set her rocker in motion and tried to get her pencil working to sketch something, anything. Maybe the scratch of lead on paper, the rhythmic creak of the old boards, and the back and forth, back and forth, would erase memories of the men—and the woman—who’d brandished those words along with a knife, a gun, and a bomb. Or maybe, if the memory glued itself to her thoughts like sticky tape, she could use it to help with what was to come.
Behind her, the cottage waited, cool and welcoming, their safety net in the early years and the place that had allowed them to pretend to be normal once they’d begun their undercover life as Arabs. Would it cocoon them as well after the tale was told? She prayed so.
She and David knew the difference between the truth and a lie. Knew it intimately. Moral relativism, that posh term for a decadent point of view, didn’t fit either of them, and yet they lied for a living.
She stared out at the lake, where the light shimmered on the water, silhouetting David as he lowered himself to the dock next to their son. The sun, edging its way over the horizon, blurred images just as their lies had smeared the charcoal portrait of their life.
And now they were about to break into truth with the one who meant the world to them. It made her gut hurt, because Tony would hate them after this day’s work. He’d think their truths putrid because of what the years in Lebanon had taught him.
He turned and waved his rod, obviously wanting her to remember his promise of fish for tonight. “Today I’ll catch the big one, Mom. I can feel it. Today is my lucky day.”
Tears had welled at the words, but he’d merely glanced at his dad and grinned. Her men often shared that look, the one that meant women were incomprehensible to the male mind.
David and Tony baited their hooks and tossed lines off the dock’s edge. She couldn’t see the splash of the weight as it pulled the morsel down to fish level, but she could imagine it. Imagine the plop as it hit the water and her boy’s grin because they were out there again, with the promise of dinner waiting to be reeled in.
If only fishing were all they had to do today. If only.

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