Her heart beating fast, Joey stuffed the candy in a drawer and darted to her walk-in art closet. It was edged in cedar oak shelves, with special slots for canvases to rest, with thoughtful compartments for paints and pens. Joey had created the many canvases that now occupied the shelves for a show a couple of months before, but the gallery had backed out. She’d been devastated, her faith dampened that against all odds she’d make it as an artist.

Joey plopped on the floor carpeted in a cream squiggle print. She ran her hand across an empty shelf, contented at the granulated wood dust that adhered to her fingertips. It smelled like her grandfather’s wooden shoe trees that she used to help him slip into his beautiful wing-tip shoes.

His fine shoes now sat on her shelf. She liked to hold them from time to time, talk to them. Italian leather, he once told her proudly, when they snuck away from dinner. Joey didn’t think of her grandfather as an adult then. He was her buddy who led her to the back laundry room where his shoes lived. He showed her how to polish and buff them and insert the shoe trees. He only had one pair of special-occasion shoes. He didn’t need more than that, he explained. All his shirts went with black. If a shirt didn’t go with black, well, he wouldn’t buy it, simple as that.

He was such a simple brick, her grandfather, such an unassuming Jenga piece. Joey shifted to a recline across the carpet, slipping a stray sweatshirt under her head. Her eyes felt like they had anchors attached to them, dragging them down. She reached for her grandfather’s shoe off the shelf and cradled it to her so the soft leather rested against her cheek. Then her eyes fluttered shut and sleep finally came.

Chapter Nineteen

Sarah

Corfu
1943

They arrived in Lefkada as the sun dwindled, still bright enough to experience the assault of colors, places, and people. As Sarah was hugged by people of varying shapes and smells, she endured the panic telling her that something was very wrong. Her whole life she’d known the Jewish quarter of Corfu Town, and now here she was, smothered to the bosom of Milos’s mother, whose brass breastplate on her velvet outfit threatened to take out Sarah’s eye.

“Oh, it’s so wonderful, just wonderful! Our new daughter.”

“Efharisto,” Sarah said, thank you, thank you, thank you, to the myriad wishes of na zeesete. May the both of you live long.

On their way from Corfu, she and Milos had decided to tell his parents they’d already married. His family would expect that cemented union to accept her into the fold, and Sarah had no intention of a real wedding until her parents came around. She was still convinced that eventually they’d soften to a marriage.