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Dust coated the inside of Joyce’s nose, making her sneeze violently. She shook it off and continued digging through the boxes in the barely touched corner of the attic. The box she was looking for was unlabeled. Lonnie had wanted her to get rid of everything in it. Instead, she’d boxed it up and stashed it away in the middle of the night.
But Lonnie was gone now. He’d left weeks ago and it was clear that this time it was going to stick.
And she was going to find the damn box if she had to spend all night searching.
It didn’t take all night. All told, it took less than an hour to find what she was looking for. But it felt so much longer, like she’d spent days in the attic, rooting through every inch of the room, searching for what she’d buried years ago. With every box she opened, she tensed, a part of her feeling like a kid sneaking cookies out of the jar before dinner. Like she was about to be caught at something.
Still she tore open box after box, until at last she found it.
Until she uncovered what remained of Joyce Horowitz. What had survived the years of cutting away pieces of her to make herself more acceptable.
Her touch was light as she lifted the menorah. As if it was made of thin glass rather than metal and would break if she held it too tight. Like everything else in the box, it had belonged to her parents and passed down to her after her mom died, just a few months after Jonathan was born. She’d never thought to ask where it came from. If her parents had managed to bring it with them when they’d escaped Ukraine, or if they’d gotten it after they made it here. It must have been the latter. If not, saving it would’ve made its way into the stories they’d told her about how they made it out just in time.
Joyce set the menorah aside carefully. It was what she’d come up here to find, but she hadn’t seen the contents of this box in years. She wasn’t ready to leave it just yet. Carefully, she ran her fingers over each object inside. Her parents’ shabbat candlesticks. The worn old table runner her aunt Dveira—now Darlene—had embroidered by hand.
And the photos.
The only picture they had of her grandparents. Her twelve-year-old self and eight-year-old Karen outside the shul their families had gone to in the city when they were kids. And her, ten years old, finally being allowed to light that same menorah. Out of the shot, she knew her mom was hovering, a cup of water hidden out of sight just in case.
Everything that made up who she’d been before was shut away in this box. And Lonnie had wanted her to throw all of it away.
Grimly determined, Joyce grabbed the menorah and stood. She marched out of the attic, clutching it in her hand like it was a shield as she descended the stairs. Years’ worth of bitterness and resentment boiled inside her as she pulled back the curtains in the living room and set the menorah on the windowsill.
She rushed to the kitchen, digging through a drawer in a frenzy until she found the candles left over from Will’s eleventh birthday. She grabbed four of them and the box of matches and stormed back to the living room again.
The candles were a cheap store brand, wider than most. Just big enough to fit in the menorah without tipping over and burning the place down. She lit all four of them with her lighter, feeling like pressure was releasing from her chest when she saw those four lights glimmering in front of the window.
She hadn’t done it right. Hadn’t used the shamash, hadn’t said the prayers, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t even the third night. But right now, she didn’t care. It wasn’t like anyone in Hawkins other than Karen Wheeler would know the difference. Joyce could focus on doing it right tomorrow. For tonight, all she wanted was to be Jewish again, somewhere the rest of the world could see.