It was an old bronze paperweight in the shape of a chai—the Jewish word for life, a combination of two letters that Reid always thought looked vaguely cow-shaped. It was big and heavy, about seven inches in each direction. The story went that it was made from candlesticks that had been secreted out of the synagogue in Reszel, the village where Reid’s grandmother had been born and from where she’d fled. Dull, clumpy seams marked where the metal had been merged together, like scar tissue.
