Skye tried to imagine that precise scenario and found she couldn’t. If she left the island tomorrow, boarded a morning ferry, and abandoned her little house, she’d need to have a destination in mind. Going back to her mother’s place in England wasn’t an option, and anywhere else would require spending money she couldn’t spare. To run now would be condemning herself to a lifetime of running, of living with fear at the center of everything. Joy was right; that path constituted a win for only one person, and it certainly wasn’t her.
She thought of Katerina, who must have been scared by theprospect of war. Many Greeks had fled before the occupying forces caught up with them, but not her—not Kat.
She had stayed.
Skye crossed the room and picked up her suitcase, laying it flat on the bed.
“Does this mean you’ve changed your mind? Joy asked.
“It means I’ve run out of options,” Skye said. “I figure I have to face Martyn somewhere, and it may as well be here.”
“You won’t have to do it alone,” Joy assured her. “I’ll be right here, and Andreas, too, if—”
“Not Andreas.” Skye was firm. “I mean it.”
Joy’s face fell, though she managed a weak smile.
“He cares about you, you know?” she said. “He cares about all of us. That’s just who he is. A good man, a man you can trust. They’re not all bad.”
“I don’t think he’s bad,” Skye said. “I just…Promise me you won’t tell him?”
Joy breathed in deeply, pressing her lips together before nodding once, almost to herself.
“All right,” she said. “I promise.”
Thirty-three
April 1941
The girl was hunched on a low stool in Leni’s kitchen, a cup of coffee clutched in both hands. She looked caught between childhood and adulthood, innocent and haunted at the same time. Draped in the kind of black dress a grandmother would wear, she met Katerina’s eye as she and Stefanos made their way into the room, only to glance hurriedly away.
“Come,” Stefanos said to her. “Do not be afraid. Kat is a friend. You can trust her.”
When the girl did not respond, Katerina looked across toward her sister. Leni was preoccupied with ladling soup into five bowls and kept her head down while, at the table, Michalis sat silently, one foot restlessly tapping against the floor. His spectacles lay discarded, one lens veined with a spiderweb crack.
Stefanos lightly touched her arm as he stepped around her, removing his hat and tossing it down. Michalis jumped violently at the sound, eyes wider than a snared rabbit’s, though when Leni rushed to soothe him, he shooed her away, muttering impatient words.
“Sorry,” she said meekly, turning away to fetch a spoon for each of them. Katerina saw the flare of color on her sister’s cheeks, felt the sting of rejection as keenly as if it had been her own. At one time, she would have been quick to leap in and defend Leni, though something told her this would be unwise. Her brother-in-law had changed, been reduced to someone smaller, harder, more unyielding.
Stefanos beckoned for the girl to move closer.
“This is Esther,” he said. “Her brother, Daniel, was with us in the mountains.”
“Where is he now?” Katerina asked, taking a seat.
“Gone,” Stefanos said. “Killed during an ambush.”
The girl, Esther, sniffed as she sat. She had neat, symmetrical features, rosebud lips that she pursed to stem her tears, curls of black hair, and watchful eyes.
“He had given us a letter to pass on to her if anything were to happen, and when we reached the village, we found that the Germans had been through already. Many people were dead.”
“They killed my mother and father,” Esther said.
It was the first time she had uttered a word in Katerina’s presence, and her voice was tight with defiance.
“The soldiers demanded to know who in the village was of Jewish faith, and a traitorous neighbor pointed to our house. I did not know what to do, and so I hid. There was a hut in the back, where we kept the chickens, and I lay on my stomach beneath the straw, heard the gunshots and the screams.”
Leni reached across and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
