“But we’re not living with the Nazis in charge now!” Joey was surprised to find this anger, or whatever it was, boiling to her surface. “Knowing about all the evil my grandparents experienced doesn’t help me. It just makes me so…”

Joey turned away, unable to pinpoint the feeling, and took in the airy space with light-blue walls and yet a pervading eeriness. Everyone was so old. Everything was so sad. There were fewer than a hundred Jews left in Corfu to pray here. Before the war, there had been two thousand. But over sixty thousand Greek Jews, including seventeen hundred Corfiot Jews, were murdered in the Holocaust. Those were the statistics her father had mentioned on the walk over, when she was eager to give her ears something other than menstruation to latch onto.

Suddenly Joey was inside that old nightmare that barraged her in the night, snatched from the synagogue where her grandparents had once prayed. It was night where she’d flown to, back in the barracks, to the soundtrack of boot steps closing in. “I’m gonna wait outside.”

Her father said, “But Joey, we’re going to say kaddish for the victims soon, and then—”

“I’ll be back. I just need air.” Joey felt a thing rise up in her chest, a beast virulent and familiar. She barreled past a few old people on the steps and heaved herself through the exit. The heavy heat of late July folded her in.

Leo joined her outside a few moments later. Joey sank down to the sidewalk.

“I’m proud of you, Jonesey,” said Leo.

Joey kept her eyes trained down at her feet. “Oh yeah? For what? Coming here? You have a low bar for pride, if that’s the case. I was essentially forced.” She dug her sandal into a moss-covered stone.

“For being a good daughter.” The shadow of Leo hovered over her. “For being a good person. I think you’re a really good person, Jonesey.”

“Why? I don’t even want to know my own grandparents’ Holocaust stories. I can barely stand to visit the synagogue they used to go to.”

“You know, Jonesey, for being as crazy smart as you are, you’re missing something that’s pretty obvious to me.”

“Oh yeah?” she asked softly. “What?”

“You’re only avoiding that stuff because you love your grandparents so much. Your brain doesn’t want to accommodate all their pain. I hereby diagnose you with an excess of love, Jonesey.”

“Oh.” Joey was quiet. She didn’t have a word for the feeling she felt. It was like she was an X-ray, and Leo could see into her.

He leaned down and squeezed her hand. “I think you’re the best person I know, Jonesey.”

Chapter Thirteen

Sarah

Corfu
1943