Sarah watched the boy shrug off accolades, pat himself dry with a rag, button his shirt, and return to his fellow fishermen. And that was when she fell in love with him.

No, she didn’t love him because he made her laugh or because he had striking eyes and soft hands. Those things were true, but she learned them later. She didn’t have a choice. God didn’t ask her if she wanted to love a non-Jewish boy from Lefkada who came to Corfu to try his luck for the season. To see if their fish were any better.

If Sarah had known then what she and this fisherman had in store, would she have run far? Would she have run home?

Seventy-some years later, Milos, and still, the answers to those questions elude me.

That was our beginning, but there is so much more to tell. Can you write me back in English? Maybe you can have someone translate. Please, I can’t read more Greek. It makes me feel, well, unbearable. If you can’t find a way to write in English, send me one of those little yellow faces the kids use these days. My granddaughter Joey, she’s a girl, not a boy, it’s short for Josephine—she helped me set up my computer so I could talk with you. She told me there is one face that means laughing and crying at the same time. Have you ever heard of anything so stupid, Milos? Back then we laughed and we cried, but only separate, didn’t we? We laughed so hard and then I only cried.

I am tired now, Milos. I think I will go watch my rosebushes.

I hope you are well. I hope you have been loved.

Chapter Six

Joey

Florida
2019

Joey looped her sandals on her thumb and crossed the sand already scorching in the morning sun. She’d asked Leo to meet her at the pier at Lighthouse Point because it was private and far from Delray, minimizing the risk of encountering anyone she knew. The beach was vacant aside from an old man sculpting a sandcastle by the shore. Ahead, a lighthouse presided over a row of white-shuttered beach rentals. A silhouette hovered in the shadow of the lighthouse, near the end of the pier. Joey’s body lurched like there was something it remembered.

“Leo,” she whispered, covering her mouth with her hand. “Holy shit.”

Joey walked slowly toward the pier, adjusting the half-tuck of her flowy white blouse into her burnt-orange high-waisted shorts. The man at the end of the pier turned. He tossed up a tennis ball, and Joey watched its trajectory, higher and higher until clapping back into his open palm.

“Hey, Jonesey.” A smile unfurled on lips she once could map in her sleep.

Jonesey. The nickname traveled through her exquisitely slowly, dragging with it the bittersweet memory of its origin.