After Light by Catherine Hunter

Author:Catherine Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Signature Editions
Published: 2015-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

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After the protest strikes in the spring of 1943, the Germans ordered the Dutch citizens to turn in their radios. So the people resorted to making their own radios, crystal sets they concealed in all manner of locations, so they could listen to Radio Orange. At the Dutch Resistance Museum, where Durgan has taken them today, Von and Kyle and Meredith listen to the tape-recorded voices of elderly men and women who lived through the Nazi occupation. They view models of houses with secret compartments for hiding Jewish families or Dutch boys old enough to be drafted into the German army. Kyle is fascinated by a tiny matchbox, displayed half open and stuffed with radio parts. It’s like something they got out of a spy movie, he says. Durgan reminds him it’s the other way around. War first. Movies later.

Durgan has recommended a lot of places to see, most of them related to the war. “Rosheen immersed herself in the history of the war while she was here,” he says. “She wanted to know all the details, whether they showed up in her work or not.”

Later, at a café down the street, Kyle takes out his mother’s yellow scrapbook. He has never returned it to Von, never actually placed it in her hands. He keeps it in his backpack, as if it belongs to him. He shows Durgan the pasted-in letter from Marijke Haas, asking, “Do you understand Dutch?”

“Sure.” Durgan leans over and reads. “This person, Marijke Haas, says she met Frank Garrison during the war. She says here she has photographs for Rosheen’s art show. But I don’t think Rosh ever got them. She never mentioned them to me. Have you met Marijke yet?”

“No,” says Kyle. He looks at Von. “Aren’t you going to contact her? Her address is right here.”

“Yes,” says Von. “I meant to. I will.”

She is not as eager to learn about her father as she was to learn about her grandmother. She felt a closeness to Deirdre as she uncovered the story of her past. Was it because they were both women? Or was it because Deirdre’s life had been at a good safe distance? Her father’s life, so fiercely tangled with her own, seems far more dangerous. What does this Marijke know? Von fears the discovery of a long-lost sibling, or some such awful revelation. She has to face it, but thinks it better if she faces it alone. Maybe while Meredith and Kyle are in France.

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