“Scott, you’ve got your dancing shoes on.” Maisy set her martini down and clapped her hands in glee. “I know it. Come on. I’ll put on music for the syrtaki.”

Joey’s father stumbled up and waved his arms in the air. He had long, slim arms that never tanned, like glow sticks in the night. Joey didn’t think she’d ever seen her father dance. He must have had a second glass of wine. He was doing a half Roger Rabbit, half Irish jig. He was an atrocious dancer, especially in comparison with Maisy, who in her younger years had danced for the New York City Ballet.

Joey sipped her wine and watched the silhouettes of Maisy and her father. She stared at the bouquet of sunflowers in a chipped green jug on the table.

Then it hit her. Then she remembered.

*  *  *

It was vivid like it had happened the night before. But it hadn’t.

Joey had been eleven—too old to call out for her parents when she was having a nightmare. But she’d had the nightmare again about the camps that were not camps. In the nightmare, she’d been sleeping on straw with other human scarecrows, and you couldn’t escape because outside in the dark was an electrical fence that would shock you. There’d been evil men shouting and then the shouting had closed in. Boots pounding dirt. Closer and closer.

Joey sprang up in bed, panting. She watched the shadows play on the old soldier’s brick barrack walls and registered that she was in Corfu. But then she gasped because still she could hear the footsteps, and her heart jangled in her chest to their beat.

Sleeping was terrifying. You had no control where it took you.

In Joey’s fifth-grade class, just a few months prior, an older boy had given a presentation about his family’s trip to Auschwitz. Before that, Joey had known about Auschwitz in only a tangential way. Her grandfather’s numbers were from Auschwitz. There was a horrible room full of human hair there. Her grandmother had a picture of suitcases there.

But this boy had shown pictures of barracks and impossibly emaciated people and things called gas chambers. Where people were gassed. He’d told about an evil man who sent people right to live, left to die. He’d talked about families wrenched apart, experiments on twin girls, death. Murder. Basically everyone was murdered for a thing they couldn’t change. For being Jewish. Even if you converted, it didn’t matter. Jewish blood condemned you.

Joey was Jewish.

Joey had always despised scary movies. In kindergarten, her teacher had called her mom in for a conference because Joey refused to watch the movies at rest hour. Her mom had protested that the teacher was showing scary movies. The infamous line the teacher had said in response was, “Petey the Dog?”