As Sarah’s gaze panned the crowd, searching for her friend, she noted the back of her own mother a row ahead, in her one nice black dress with rose corsage embroidery, eyes surely boring into her Mahzor Romania, allowing no distractions from her prayers. And then in the men’s section, Sarah could make out her father’s head, with its bushy red mop now torched by gray, and the raspberry curls of her little brother, Benjamin, beside him. Sarah listened to the recitation of the Shema, tapping on the wooden pew as September’s potent sun streamed through the windows, casting hazy beams across the herringbone oak floor.

Soon the holidays would arrive. The Jewish quarter, the Evraiki, would be suffused with the solemn magic of a new year, and Rabbi Nechama would blow the special shofar made in the mountains of Epirus from a wild black ram.

As Rabbi Nechama’s prayer reached a tremendous crescendo, Rachel slid beside Sarah, with another girl in tow who looked to be around their age, sixteen.

“My mother will kill me.” Rachel retrieved a faded black prayer book and flipped it open. “Is she looking?”

“Not now,” Sarah reassured her, spotting Rachel’s mother, Roza, a few pews away. Anyway, she didn’t know what Rachel was afraid of. Unlike Sarah’s own mother, whose forehead summoned grooves at the most minor of infractions, Roza was lauded for her smile, trotted out at all occasions, even sometimes inappropriately at funerals, which she called celebrations.

Roza worked for the Jewish community, keeping up the synagogue and caring for the community’s elder members at the old age home. The girls would often help her change bedpans and sweep the sanctuary or wash its windows. When they were younger, they used to play hide-and-seek across the temple grounds. Once, Sarah had hidden in the aron for the Torahs, and when she’d popped out, expecting Rachel, Roza had stood there instead. Sarah had feared Roza would scold her like her own mother surely would, but Roza had just tut-tutted and said in the future the aron for the Torahs wasn’t a play spot.

“Who is she?” Sarah motioned to the girl beside Rachel who, like her friend, had straight black hair in plaits, but brown eyes to Rachel’s green. She wore a dress nearly identical to Rachel’s own, with a starched white collar and red plaid pattern.

“That’s my cousin Stemma,” Rachel whispered. “From Saloniki.”

Stemma. It was a name for a daughter with many sisters before her. The name had its root in the Greek word stamata, meaning “to stop.” Stop sending us daughters. Sarah already felt sorry for this Stemma, and she didn’t even yet know her.

“Yia sou, Stemma,” said Sarah. “Welcome to Kerkyra.”

“Yia sou,” Stemma said, but her eyes didn’t match her lips when she spoke. She stared off at the aron on the synagogue’s east wall.

“She’s visiting?”