Excerpt from The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I had offered, not because I wanted to make the dinner or even cared so much about the ritual of Shabbat, but because I didn't enjoy attending the dinner at Lena's, the way her piercing green eyes bored holes into me. It was as if they knew my secret and she hated me for it, though there was no way she could know—Ed had no idea about the diaphragm I'd gotten from Dr. Greenberg. And I'd told no one, not even my mother or Susan.

But then I understood that wasn't what it was at all. The last time we'd been there, two months earlier, Lena had taken me aside just before dinner. "I raised boys, you know," she'd said, her voice curling, so I didn't want to point out that, technically, she'd raised only Leo. Ed had grown up in Russia with an aunt and had moved to America as an adult to join Lena, only four years ago. "And neither one of them had the . . . problem that David has." She frowned, and her green eyes felt hot against my face, as if they really and truly could burn me.

"David is fine," I shot back at her. "Dr. Greenberg says he's just taking his time to develop, that's all." That was, of course, only part of what Dr. Greenberg had said, but that was the part that had to be right.

She wagged her finger in my face. "You don't love him enough," she said, but it wasn't clear whether she was referring to David or to Ed. I didn't answer, and when we got back to Delancey Street that night, I told Ed that I would cook us Shabbat dinner from then on. I blamed it on my mother and Bubbe Kasha, who was getting old and had a hard time with her memory, and so far they had joined us each week.

But now, tonight, I had a brisket in the oven, enough to feed ten, and no one coming to dinner.

ED WALKED IN the door just after five, just after I'd gotten David settled with a pile of brightly colored blocks on the floor by our window overlooking Monroe Street. I'd pulled all the yellows out and had given them to him, and he sat there and stacked them over and over again, seemingly contented, lulled by their brightness. The brisket was done and I had it on the table, along with our Shabbat candles. I smoked a cigarette nervously, waiting for Ed to arrive, watching out the window at all the men in suits rushing by on their way home from work. From this high up, they were tiny, and they all looked the same, cloaked in dark suits, dark hats, and I could not make out which one was Ed until I heard the door opening, and then I knew I'd missed him entirely.

He entered the apartment wordlessly and walked toward the narrow kitchen. I heard him rustling in the cabinets, pulling out a glass and pouring his vodka. And then he entered the living room, glass in hand.

He didn't lean in to kiss me, as my father had always done with my mother when he returned home from work each evening, or even stoop down to pat David on the head, as I remember my father doing with me. Instead, he simply sat on the couch, downed his vodka, and then he said, "Where is everyone?"

"They're not coming." I squashed my cigarette out in the ashtray on the coffee table just next to where Ed rested his feet.

"What do you mean not coming?" he asked.

"There's some kind of smallpox outbreak, I guess," I said. "So Susan didn't want to bring the twins into the city, and my mother and Bubbe Kasha thought it better to stay home." I tried to read his face, to judge his reaction. But his expression was blank, his gaze fixed straight ahead on the beige wall, and I couldn't tell if he was angry or just tired. I thought about what Mr. Bergman asked, about whether Ed was having trouble with work now that everyone was making such a big deal out of Truman's loyalty oath. Ed's Russian accent, even four years after he'd come to America, was so thick, so obvious, that it worried me that it would brand him now that everyone had started worrying about Stalin and Russia and American loyalty in a way they hadn't before. "I have the brisket ready," I added. "And the candles."

Excerpted from The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor. Copyright © 2015 by Jillian Cantor. Excerpted by permission of Riverhead Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.