A Remarkable Kindness by Diana Bletter Page A

eating?” Boaz touched her arm.
    Another welcome change: Rob would have given Emily a look that implied, Why are you eating so much?
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” Boaz asked.
    â€œNothing at all.” Emily smiled.
    They ate the rest of the meal in comfortable silence, as if, she supposed, they had been together for years and didn’t have to make small talk. With Hebrew and Arabic conversations going on at the tables all around them, Emily thought that she could get to know Boaz over time, gradually, not all at once. She wondered what his house looked like, which side of the bed he liked to sleep on, and how it would feel to snuggle with him, cuddling up in the crook of his body. After Turkish coffee and baklava, she teased, “Isn’t this way past a farmer’s bedtime?”
    â€œIt is late,” he said sheepishly. “For me, anyway.”
    Emily waited while he paid, and they left the restaurant, retracing their steps through the city. The moon was sliced in half and silvery bright and the sea slapped against the rocks. The air was lukewarm and tender, a salty breeze lifting off the water. As Emily walked, the heel of her shoe caught in between the cobblestones.
    â€œYou okay?” Boaz asked, catching her as she tripped.
    â€œI’m going to be fashionable even if it kills me,” Emily joked, and she allowed herself to rest against him, aware of how he kept his arm around her until they reached his truck. They headed out of Akko, and were driving down the ruler-straight road into Peleg when his beeper went off.
    â€œAn irrigation pipe burst in the groves,” he said. “Sorry, I have to go check.”
    The truck jerked along a bumpy dirt lane and then into Boaz’s groves. The headlights slid over the trees, illuminating the circular faces of the oranges.
    â€œI’ve computerized the irrigation pipes in these groves.” Boaz stopped the car by a wooden shed. “In my father and grandfather’s time, they worked like dogs hauling the pipes on their backs.” He reached over Emily’s legs, opened the glove compartment, took out a flashlight, and left the truck. The circle of light Boaz held in his hand shrank to the size of a firefly and then disappeared altogether. Having nothing to do, Emily grew tired of sitting there alone, so she opened the door and stepped down onto the soft earth, raising her arms. An owl hooted.
    â€œI heard your ex-husband was a very good chef,” Boaz said, reappearing from out of nowhere, and she pictured Rob right then, almost half Boaz’s height and weight.
    â€œI heard you were a very good soldier and a very good farmer.” Emily spoke with conviction. “And you look like you belong right here.”
    â€œI love watching things I plant grow.”
    Emily stood still. She knew what was about to happen—finally—and she waited while Boaz took a step toward her, and then another. She could see the outline of his rugged face in the moonlight. He kissed her hard, wrapping his arms around her, and guided her back to his truck.
    â€œAre you sure?” he asked, taking off her blouse and burying his face between her breasts, unwrapping her skirt like a gift, andunzipping his pants, and then sliding himself inside her as if he’d been lost and wandering his whole life and had finally reached his destination. She’d thought she’d end up at his place or hers, anyway, and making love with him in the cramped front seat of his truck with the door opened onto the trees, the earth, and the darkness was the exact opposite of anything she’d ever done with Rob. She was thrilled that Boaz wanted her. And she knew that if she was the journey’s end for him, then unlike Rob, Boaz would never betray her.
    â€œI found them!” Boaz called afterward. He’d been kneeling on all fours by the truck, looking for her shoes. He handed them back to her. “How do you walk in these