Is it true, Milos? It made me feel a lot of things I thought I was too tired to feel. And then I couldn’t go to the movie. I just lay in my bed staring up at my ceiling, thinking about one thing you wrote. You asked for my forgiveness. You wrote that you know how much you hurt me, how much your actions destroyed me.

Well, they did.

You didn’t mean to destroy me though. And you had help. They were the real destroyers. But can I forgive you? All I can do is give you my warm feelings. I don’t know if I can forgive you, Milos. I want to forgive you. I’ve wanted my whole life to forgive many people and forget many people but ultimately I’ve come to understand that it’s not up to me. This may sound strange, but it’s actually up to a sad old lady who lives inside me. She can’t forgive or forget. I can’t forget either, Milos, but maybe I can soften her to forgive. I will see what influence I can have. She can be a stubborn mule, that old lady.

Oh Milos, I’m being silly. I am that old lady, of course.

The truth is, I’ve had a nice, full life. I was married to a good man, but he is long gone now. And I have a daughter. Just the one child. Bea. We have a complicated relationship. Complicated because I love her to the ends of the earth with no feelings of complication, whereas she loves me, it seems, with endless amounts of complication. I have two granddaughters too, and my three girls make up the whole of my world. I will tell you more, but first I am compelled to go back. There are so many things you don’t know. And some things you do know, but you don’t know to the core.

So I have to start way back at the beginning, Milos, don’t you think?

Chapter Five

Sarah

Corfu
1942

Every Sabbath morning, Sarah Batis watched the great big beard of Rabbi Iakov Nechama. As he stood on the bimah, his beard vibrated with the fervor of his prayers, igniting something in her heart. Sarah was at the grand Scuola Greca synagogue on Velissariou, in the women’s partition, on the same bench on which she always sat with her best friend, Rachel.

Only Rachel was unusually late this morning.