“No. She’s here for…for a while, I guess.”

“A while?” Sarah knew everything about Rachel, she’d thought, but not about this phantom cousin Stemma from Saloniki. Saloniki was on mainland Greece and home largely to Sephardic Jews, who had escaped Spain during Inquisition times. Whereas Sarah was a Romaniote Jew, whose ancestors had resided in Greece for millennia. The communities didn’t often intermarry, although Rachel’s parents had, her Romaniote father and Sephardic mother. It’s why Roza’s bourthetto was so delectable; the meal of little fishes in spicy red sauce was a Sephardic specialty.

“Stemma escaped.” Rachel bit her lip. “She escaped from the Germans, who invaded Saloniki.”

The Germans.

The congregants rose for the final prayer, and Sarah rose with them, or her feet did on their own, divorced from her head, because she felt utterly incapacitated by this information.

“And what about her parents?”

For what seemed like forever, Rachel didn’t speak. There was just the deep, beautiful voice of Rabbi Nechama, but for the first time maybe in Sarah’s life, his prayer didn’t bolster her.

“Her mom died a few years ago, and her father was taken,” Rachel finally whispered.

Sarah glanced over at Stemma, shorter than them, miniature really, when Sarah caught the whole of her. Stemma stood ramrod-straight like a statue, as if she belonged on a pedestal somewhere.

“Taken? How?”

“They made him convene at the square and beat him, and he had to do these humiliating exercises at gunpoint—”

“They beat him?” Sarah’s heart thwacked her chest. “At gunpoint?”

Rachel nodded slowly. “Stemma has barely spoken since she arrived, but she finally told me the whole story this morning. That’s why we were late. She said the Germans invaded a year and a half ago, and it’s been terrible. First, the Jewish press was banned, and Jews weren’t allowed into cafés.”

“They were banned from cafés?” It wasn’t like Sarah frequented cafés. Her family didn’t have the money for a frivolous coffee or pastry, but she was friendly with Spyro, the owner of a café on Scholemvourgou Street, who sometimes slipped her a cheese bourekas when she visited her grandmother at the sanitorium next door.