But Sarah’s eyes stayed locked on her family. She wished to die right there and then. She didn’t know everything—in later months she’d learn of concentration camps and Auschwitz—but she knew the rumors from Saloniki. She knew that Jews were disappearing. And kneeling there, amid the dead and beaten Jews and the pope, she knew somehow that her family’s fate was already sealed.

Milos pulled her up, and her limbs betrayed her, clicking back into her core to hold her up. Milos lifted Pope Thomatzidis to his feet and said, “Ella, we will help you.”

Sarah’s eyes stayed riveted to her family. She watched Benjamin put his hand to his mouth. He blew Sarah a little kiss. He didn’t smile again. Just the kiss. Before Milos led her away, Sarah put a hand to her mouth. She couldn’t feel her hand. She couldn’t feel her lips. She blew her little brother a kiss in return.

*  *  *

The next thing Sarah remembered was waking in their attic room. She was screaming, sobbing. Nightmares when she was awake. Nightmares when she was asleep. She didn’t speak, to Milos or to anyone. Milos told the cheese lady she was expecting a baby. She was very sick. She needed some time off.

Sarah lay there in the bed where symphonies had once played as she and Milos had wound and bound their bodies with love. Only now, she prayed desperately for the courage to commit suicide. A few times she took a knife and ran the jagged edges against her neck. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Her family was gone, and even in joining them, she was a coward.

*  *  *

A few weeks later, Milos came home from fishing. He sat on the bed, and Sarah inched away to its farthest border. He said he’d heard something he thought she should know. That he’d debated telling her, but he couldn’t keep this from her. The night after they’d seen her family on Lefkada, Greek Resistance had helped a few Jews escape. The Jews were then hidden by local fishermen and had managed to flee to the mainland.

“Do you know who?” They were her first words in weeks, and they scraped her throat as she spoke. Her heart leaped a little with possibility, and she hated it anew, for the hope she thought she’d beaten out of it.

“I don’t.” Milos studied his hands. He’d once taken her eyes into his at every opportunity, but her eyes weren’t accessible anymore.

“Do you think there was a young boy? A couple?”

His eyes didn’t stray from his hands—hands that used to fill her with pleasure. “I do not think so.”