Sarah walked inside the temple, past the well from which she used to collect water, and saw the back part in rubble. She heard the murmur of voices overhead, presumably in the sanctuary. She stepped down to the wing that once housed Rabbi Nechama’s office, no longer identifiable if she hadn’t known where he’d once sat and learned. She remembered what Costas had said about him, how he’d been made to hand a bath towel to the German commandant, and she swallowed hard and coughed into the sleeve of her folksy Lefkada dress. She walked to the edge of the rabbi’s old office space to peer across a wall reduced to nothing. She’d expected to see her old Talmud Torah school, which had abutted the synagogue—but that too was gone.

She had to get out of there. If she didn’t see another person soon, a Jew, she was going to leap out of her body.

Sarah felt her feet quicken, now running up the stairs. She burst into the sanctuary, initially heartened at the sight of life. Jews. Her heart quivered as she spotted a familiar profile kneeling on the floor, polishing a pew, but it wasn’t until Sarah had hastened across the room that she realized who it was.

Roza—Rachel’s mother.

A sob arose in Sarah’s throat. “Roza?”

The woman looked up with absent eyes. She had aged immeasurably since Sarah had last seen her, not even three years prior. She wore a prison uniform—dingy white with black stripes—and her face, once perpetually alight, bore such visible pain that Sarah flinched.

“Sarah,” Roza said slowly. “Sarah Batis?”

“Yes. Oh, Roza.” Sarah couldn’t help it. She set Penelope in her cage on the floor and dove down and threw herself into Roza’s arms. She clutched Roza’s shoulders, now as tiny as kumquats. “Roza, what happened?”

Roza clenched her rag to her chest, enduring the hug. Reluctantly, Sarah released her grip. “They’re gone, Sarah. They’re all gone.”

It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Roza’s face didn’t flicker as she recited them. “My Menachem. My Matathias. My Rachel. My brother’s girl, Stemma. Gone.”

“No.” The names screeched in Sarah’s ears, cycling round and round. “Rachel?” Her sweet, beautiful friend. How could it be?

Roza smelled like putrid flowers. Sarah fought back nausea. “Your family too, Sarah. Your mother and father—”

“No.” Sarah covered her ears. “No, please. No, no, no—”

Hands circled Sarah’s wrists, to free her ears and condemn them. A voice as dry as dust. “Your Benjamin too.”

“No no no no no no no.” Sarah gasped for breath—breath she didn’t even want.

“All of them, Sarah mou. Yes. Everyone is gone.”