Chap­ter 22: With­out a Song begins with the weight of clo­sure bear­ing heav­i­ly on Moshe’s shoul­ders. Pack­ing up the Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store proved more painful than he antic­i­pat­ed, trig­ger­ing mem­o­ries long buried. Dis­cov­er­ing the but­ter bar­rel that Chona once used to calm him, now filled with toys for neigh­bor­hood chil­dren, forced him to con­front not only her absence but the gap­ing silence left behind. Moshe, over­whelmed by emo­tion, broke down qui­et­ly while Nate and Addie respect­ful­ly kept their dis­tance, their own bur­dens stitched into the fab­ric of their silence. The grief was not just his—it belonged to all of them in dif­fer­ent shapes and shades. Though Moshe tried to bury his sor­row beneath the act of sort­ing and orga­niz­ing, every object in that base­ment whis­pered Chona’s pres­ence, turn­ing the chore into a sacred farewell.

Pain lin­gered not just in mem­o­ry but in Moshe’s body—a chest pain that halt­ed him mid-move­ment, as if his grief had tak­en phys­i­cal shape. Addie noticed but didn’t approach; touch had always been Chona’s way, not his. That con­trast between them remind­ed him how his wife embraced life with ges­tures that defied soci­etal lines, whether through hugs, play­ful touch­es, or lift­ing a cry­ing child with­out hes­i­ta­tion. Her defi­ance wasn’t loud, but it was profound—she treat­ed every human as wor­thy of warmth, no mat­ter their race or sta­tion. In her world­view, kind­ness wasn’t option­al; it was the rule. That world­view was fad­ing from the store as it was packed away, just as it seemed to be van­ish­ing from the town around them. With­out Chona, Moshe saw him­self not as a builder of bridges through music and the­atre, but as a man left with­out his melody.

Although Moshe tried to pow­er through the cleanup, emo­tion­al exhaus­tion returned like a tide. Con­ver­sa­tions with Nate and Addie remained brief and cau­tious. He asked about Dodo, whose absence was deeply felt, but words around the boy’s insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion car­ried too much weight. Addie assured him a vis­it was being planned, but Moshe, try­ing to main­tain com­po­sure, offered to arrange it him­self. That act—his offer—carried a kind of des­per­a­tion, a need to remain involved, to still mat­ter to the ones who had mat­tered to Chona. Yet what stung was Nate’s increas­ing qui­et, his ret­i­cence more obvi­ous each day. It wasn’t just grief—it was ten­sion that hadn’t been voiced.

Into that silence arrived Isaac and Malachi, unex­pect­ed but deeply wel­come. Their pres­ence momen­tar­i­ly lift­ed Moshe’s spir­its, bring­ing laugh­ter and mem­o­ry back to life, even if only briefly. Malachi’s sur­prise arrival with a tiny pair of leather baby pants etched with the Star of David broke the ten­sion, prompt­ing tears and warmth to wash over the room. The gift was absurd, endear­ing, and per­fect­ly in char­ac­ter. Their reunion in the back room over glass­es of hot tea reflect­ed old times, but beneath their exchange was the unspo­ken truth that the world had changed. Malachi’s com­ment about “trou­ble back home” hint­ed at dan­gers unfold­ing in Europe—a warn­ing Moshe couldn’t afford to ignore. Beneath the tea and humor, there was unease and a loom­ing fear about the world’s shift­ing bal­ance.

Isaac, more seri­ous than ever, took it upon him­self to speak with Nate and Addie—his con­cern about Chona’s death and Doc Roberts’ role in it sur­fac­ing. Yet Nate held firm, reject­ing Isaac’s offer of mon­ey and remind­ing him of the dif­fer­ence between trans­ac­tion­al help and gen­uine human decen­cy. That refusal was deeply root­ed in expe­ri­ence. For Nate, laws meant lit­tle if they could be rewrit­ten at a moment’s notice by those in pow­er. His loy­al­ty lay not with mon­ey or influ­ence, but with Moshe, the man who had shown kind­ness and trust with­out expec­ta­tion. Addie, too, qui­et­ly rein­forced this loyalty—not through defi­ance, but through stead­fast dig­ni­ty. Togeth­er, they embod­ied a resis­tance root­ed in lived truth, not court­room maneu­ver­ing.

As Isaac pressed, try­ing to jus­ti­fy the need for tes­ti­mo­ny or legal inter­ven­tion, Nate’s resis­tance held. He didn’t trust the sys­tem to pro­tect Dodo, nor did he believe in tem­po­rary solu­tions built on priv­i­lege. His insight, born of lived dis­crim­i­na­tion, remind­ed Isaac of an uncom­fort­able truth: jus­tice was rarely blind when it came to race. Nate’s mes­sage was clear—Dodo didn’t need sav­ing through white bene­fac­tors, but through the qui­et strength of a com­mu­ni­ty that had already endured too much. Isaac, unused to being chal­lenged, final­ly under­stood that his mon­ey could not repair what Moshe and Chona had giv­en freely: dig­ni­ty, belief, and pro­tec­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, Moshe’s grief was not just about the loss of his wife, but the unrav­el­ing of a life built around con­nec­tion and courage. With­out Chona, he felt like a man stripped of his song, his stage qui­et­ed, and his rhythm lost. Yet in the sup­port of friends like Nate, Addie, Isaac, and Malachi, there remained a flick­er of what Chona had always known: com­mu­ni­ty was not built on trans­ac­tions or titles—it was built on love expressed in small, defi­ant acts. As the Heav­en & Earth Gro­cery Store emp­tied, what remained was not shelves and bar­rels, but mem­o­ry and meaning—remnants of a life that sang even in its silence.