Ari turned over and tucked her head under her pillow, trying to muffle the cacophony of hostel life. Hostelers are never quiet enough, she thought. The younger guests who had crashed into the dorm early this morning were now up again, zipping, stuffing, and cramming their assorted items into too-large bags. At least they were whispering.
Chapter 16: Ari
Prague, Czech Republic– August 2025
Previously in 1982, Colleen found comfort in the rigid structure of boarding school life and found freedom from her mom. After a playful encounter near the sports fields, Connor offered to tutor her in Spanish verbs in the student Commons after study hall.
Ari turned over and tucked her head under her pillow, trying to muffle the cacophony of hostel life. Hostelers are never quiet enough, she thought. The younger guests who had crashed into the dorm early this morning were now up again, zipping, stuffing, and cramming their assorted items into too-large bags. At least they were whispering.
Her mind returned to Ally’s comments as they broke up. “You’ve been finding scenes for other people for years. But you never found a set for us. It’s like we didn’t exist to anyone else.”
Her mind jumped to the research she’d done about her great-aunt so far. Last summer, on a visit to Liverpool to see her mother, they’d gone through her grandmother’s old journals. Ari had found a name, Dorothy, her sister called her Doro, written in the margin in careful cursive. Underneath that note was a date, and beneath the inscription, in smaller letters, the word asozial. German for “asocial.” She recalled the details her mother shared.
Dorothy had marched to Jersey on the Channel Islands with the Women’s Land Army. The Brits sent women to help tend farms as part of the war effort. She helped bring in the Jersey Royals potato crop but got trapped on the island when the Nazis invaded from 1940 to 1945. She had lived there with a woman she loved, but her mother knew nothing else about the woman. Together, the twosome made illegal radios from spare parts. Someone informed the Germans about their island-wide distribution. When the Germans broke into their house, they found the cache of parts, arrested the women, and sent them away. Dorothy did not come back.
Ari recalled the conversation with her mum.
“My mother had always been so ashamed about her sister’s life and that she was unable to save her,” said Ari’s mum.
“She must have been proud of her,” said Ari.
“No, she couldn’t talk about her. If she admitted she was a lesbian, she feared the Nazis would label her. They would send her to the camps. And she couldn’t admit to knowing about the radios either; that would also send them to the camps. Exposing her could kill the entire family.”
“There was shame about who Doro loved, wasn’t there?” Ari recalled asking.
