“Don’t tell your mother, but this bobota is the best there is.” Costas winked at Sarah, and then his face sagged. “I have terrible news to share, I’m afraid. The Jews of Corfu are here.”

Sarah’s hands froze over the table as she set down the plates of bobota. There had been word of another bout of bombings over Corfu that had caused her to nibble her fingernails to bone. Later, Sarah would understand the bombs were the work of the Americans, intended to be a diversion from their Normandy landings. “Is it because of the bombings?”

“Unfortunately, it does not have to do with the bombings.”

“What do you mean then, the Jews of Corfu are here?”

For a few terrible moments, Costas didn’t speak because he had bobota in his mouth. Her friend was too polite to speak about Sarah’s family with a mouthful of crumbs. Finally, he said, “They’ve rounded up the Jews of Corfu. Oh Sarah, it’s just terrible.”

Sarah felt her hands move and her feet step, and yet her extremities seemed divorced from her core. Time stretched and bloated. Finally, she managed to say, “Rounded them up to go where?”

“Nowhere good, I’m certain about that.” Costas tipped his head up toward the crumbling ceiling that sometimes shed powder onto Sarah’s ugly maroon dress, gifted by Milos’s mother. Sarah had tailored it to her body that had subsequently fleshed out from consuming the things she was baking. But with the cruelties and hardships of the German occupation, the dress now fit once again.

“I don’t understand. How could…how…” Sarah tried not to betray her emotion. As Milos reminded her incessantly, the fact of her Jewishness had to be assiduously concealed. But Costas was talking about her parents and Benjamin like they were a period at the end of a sentence that was already written.

Costas caressed his grandson’s cheek. He ate his bobota so quietly and carefully in a way that made Sarah despise him. Benjamin should have been there instead, eating bobota and relishing every bite.

“What I heard is that, a few days ago, the Nazis made all the Jews of Corfu gather,” Costas said. “No exceptions. On threat of death, they had to surrender their possessions. Gold, apartments, everything. The Nazis took it all. They put the Jews in the fortress, the old one. Anyone who wouldn’t go willingly was shot on the spot. It was horrific, I understand. Just horrific.”

“Shot on the spot?” Sarah’s hand migrated to her throat.

Costas nodded, and his face shaded with disdain. “The next day, the mayor issued a proclamation. He announced to the people of Corfu that at last the Jews are gone and now the island may return to prosperity and the land to its rightful owners.”

“The Jews are…gone?”