I wasn’t sure how long I’d been in that cell. My body odor was so strong that when I moved, a wave of it washed over me, and sometimes it left me feeling nauseous. With no access to sunlight, not even during toilet breaks, all I could do to judge time was count the interruptions to darkness—the delivery of a bowl of cold oatmeal and a glass of water, periodic toilet breaks. If those things were happening twice a day, I’d been in the cell for ten days—but it felt so much longer. My hips and shoulders were bruised from sleeping curled up on the hard floor. I’d been so cold for so long that my mind felt foggy—like my body was shutting down in slow motion.

This trip out of my cell was different. I found myself sitting in a stark room while a Gestapo officer shouted at me.

“You and your husband are traitors to the Reich! Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Are my children okay?

Why did you arrest me so quickly?

Did Jürgen manage to do any damage before you arrested him?

Is he gone?

Why are you keeping me alive?

Am I ever going home?

And then—a thought struck me, clearer than all the others.

He had spoken about Jürgen in the present tense. Was that an accident?

I raised my eyes from the table to look at the man opposite me. The disgust in his eyes was hard to stomach. I wondered how he’d feel if he knew he’d just given me an unexpected gift. There was at least a chance that Jürgen was alive.

That was enough to make me strong again, even though my body was weak. I met his gaze as he shouted at me, insults and threats and accusations, but I didn’t say a word.

Two men took me again, dragging me with rough hands beneath my arms, along the same corridor—but this time, instead of taking me to my cell, they dragged me up a set of stairs. My eyes watered from the sunlight, but I could make out a car waiting outside. They pushed me toward it and into the back seat.

“Where are you taking me?” I asked. No one answered, but to my surprise, the streetscape around us soon told the story.

When the car came to a stop outside my house, the man in the passenger’s seat threw my handbag at me. I fumbled to catch it.

“We’ll be watching you,” he said flatly. His gaze drifted across to Dietger and Anne’s house. There was a figure in the front window.

“That’s…that’s it?” I croaked. “I can go?”

“We’ll be watching you,” he said again. “Every move you make, we’ll know about it.”