Gravel spits as we pass through two stone pillars. Carlos sits up, alert. Up ahead, a man waits under a portico. In the wash of headlights, his hair seems to float straight up from his pale head, as if underwater. As we unwind our cramped legs and climb out of the car, he looks both anxious and glad to see us.

“Sam?” I ask.

“Yes.” Smiling, he steps forward and takes my hand. Then he turns and grasps Carlos’s elbow, as if he needs to hold on. “Shalom. Welcome.”

Carlos gives a tight smile, almost as if it is too much to ask for, this welcome.

The building before us looms so large. I go to the back seat and rouse Kamal. “No, Ammi,” he murmurs. “Let me sleep!” He tightens his knees against his chest. My heart contracts; sometimes he calls me Ammi. So much is blurred these days.

“I’ll take him.” Carlos reaches in, heaves up Kamal, and staggers behind us, Kamal’s legs dangling against him.

Sam punches a code into a flat gray panel, and a huge door swings open. Before us is an entry with a basket filled with skullcaps, like the ones you see in a mosque. Just beyond, in the hall, cubbyholes and children’s drawings tacked to a bulletin board. Around the bend is a huge staircase, with thick carved banisters, and a giant stained-glass window at the landing. The air smells of Lysol and chalk.

Carlos sets down Kamal, who rubs his eyes and looks around him, confused. “Where are we?”

“A synagogue,” I tell him. “They’ve taken us in.”

We trudge up past the stained-glass window, around a corner, and climb single file through a narrower set of stairs on the side. I feel like I’m in a story where the children are hidden in secret passages. Once I read about this thing called sanctuary—how churches shelter refugees and immigrants. Synagogues too. The idea seemed so fantastic, so unreal.

We gather behind Sam as he jams a key in a door and it swings open to a space smelling of new paint; our feet scuff powder on the floor. He snaps on a light—a bulb hanging from the ceiling. We’re standing in a small hall with different rooms branching to the sides.

“I’m so sorry we’re not quite finished. We didn’t realize it would happen so soon.”

“Neither did we,” I say.

“Thank you,” Carlos adds.

Sam hurries ahead of us, switching on lamps. There’s a living room to our right, nicely furnished. A blue sofa, a table with two folding chairs pulled up against a window. Even a TV, unconnected. A bedroom for Carlos with slanted ceilings, a bathroom with a shower stall, smelling of new plastic. A kitchen with a microwave on a cart and a hot plate with two burners. A narrow bedroom with a bunk bed.