The moment felt almost laughably cinematic. Who could imagine bombs and deportations when now there was only love and sea and beautiful young men meant to protect them, solemnly marching in their backdrop? When you were the protagonist of the story, it had to include a happy ending, didn’t it?

Milos took Sarah’s hands. “You are the most sensitive, loving person, Sarah, with a million things in your head.”

“A million,” she agreed, with a tentative laugh.

He paused, his face suddenly solemn. “Will you marry me, Sarah? Say you’ll marry me!”

“Will I marry you?” She shook her head, both floored and also unsurprised, because wasn’t this where things led? Love didn’t exist for love’s sake, after all. The object of love was to create something more than just two people standing together with hearts in their eyes. “You can’t be—”

“I am certain. I want to marry you, Sarah. I’d marry you tomorrow.”

“I need to think,” she finally said, dizzy at the speed with which they were now moving after months when she’d almost convinced herself she wouldn’t have to pick one of her two worlds. “My family…”

“When they see how much I love you, they will accept it.” He said it with a man’s unequivocal certainty.

“They…it’s not so easy.”

“Try. Please try. I’ve told my family about you. They can’t wait to meet you.” His enthusiasm was so contagious she could almost catch it.

“My mother will kill me,” she whispered.

“It’s never as bad as we think it will be. That’s what my father says.”

Sarah thought about Stemma. It could be so much worse than they thought it would be. But she resisted the urge to say it.

“Please, Sarah. I don’t need much in life. A little house one day. Some children running around. Whatever it will be, my love, we will be safe and together.”

And Sarah rested her cheek against his chest and tried to believe it.

*  *  *

The next evening, as Sarah climbed the steps to their third-floor apartment just before their weekly Sabbath meal, she decided she would have a calm conversation with her parents. She had prayed the whole winter that she would see Milos and feel differently, that their love would have gone. Sarah stood in the cool, dank hall, staring at the doorknob, unable to turn it. Their love hadn’t gone. She had to explain it to her parents in a way they would come to understand and accept.

But when she walked inside the apartment, instead of her mother at the stove, her cheeks flushed with soup steam, and her father in his chair, stretching his wrists—both her parents stood in the entry, a united wall of fury that matched the teakettle blaring on the stove.