What Joseph should have worried about he never let himself imagine: that Ben would get up early one weekday to attend a morning minyan, a prayer group at a local syna-gogue—Ben had never done that before, but Tim, his editor, who had lost his father, asked Ben to help make a minyan, ten adult Jews required to say Kaddish—so Ben walked to the synagogue that gray morn-ing through slush, through ice, maybe sleepy, and stepped in front of a truck making an illegal turn.

Just when he was on his way to perform a mitzvah, a holy deed!