She huffed a frustrated sigh. “Logan, I am really sorry about this, but I think I’m going to have to bail.”
“Really?” He looked a little disappointed, which she supposed was flattering.
“Yeah, I . . .” None of this was his fault, meat mouth aside, so she lied. “I’m coming off a breakup, and I thought I was ready, but . . .”
She was ready, was the thing. Or she had been, a day ago.
Logan was surprisingly good-natured about her abrupt about-face, especially when she insisted on picking up the tab—all that meat did not come cheap.
On the way to the subway, she checked her phone, which she’d silenced for brunch.
Max: I heard you’re on a date.
Max: Or should I say “date”?
Max: Let me know how it goes.
Max: And also that you didn’t get axe-murdered.
She pulled over to the edge of the sidewalk.
Dani: How do you know I was on a date?
Max: It’s over already? Wow. Slam, bam . . .
Dani: I couldn’t go through with it.
Her phone rang. “How did you know I was on a date?” she asked when she picked it up.
“I thought you were going to meet in public first,” he said, ignoring her question again. He sounded peeved.
“How did you know I was on a date?” she repeated.
“I’m at the palace. Leo and Marie and I were at the pub in the village while you were talking to Leo.”
She harrumphed. She’d never told Leo it was a secret, but still.
“Dani, you can’t just go home with someone without—”
“I didn’t. I bailed from brunch,” she said, answering his question now that he’d finally answered hers, though his relentless focus on the logistics of her date was getting annoying.
“Oh,” he said. “I misunderstood.”
“All right, then.” She let her irritation evaporate. He meant well.
“Why did you change your mind?”
She told him about the meat thing, spinning it into an entertaining story that had him cracking up. “I told him I was too fresh off a breakup. Anyway, if at first you don’t succeed, swipe, swipe again.”
“Let me know next time you’re going out, okay?”
“I told Leo. Why are you being so persistent about this?”
“Because I don’t want you to get axe murdered. I like you.”
She flushed. That Max-style honesty continued to be such an odd mix of flattering and awkward. “You keep saying that.”
“It keeps being true.”
“But no one talks like that, except maybe first graders. How come you didn’t get socialized out of such earnest declarations of friendship like the rest of us did?”
“Probably because I never went to school, so I didn’t get socialized at all. I had a private tutor until I left for Cambridge.”
“What? What about boarding school?”
“My brother went to boarding school. I didn’t.”
Oh. That wasn’t how she’d interpreted their brief conversation in Central Park about his brother going off to boarding school. She’d assumed Max had gone, too. “Why didn’t you go? Did it have something to do with you being the heir? Keeping you close to home?”
“No. My parents wanted me to go. Staying home was . . . my choice.”
“But I thought you didn’t like being at home? You’re always trying to get away from your family.”
“I had my reasons.”
Max was usually such an open book. But apparently, she’d hit on one of his few off-limits topics.
“Anyway,” he went on. “Indulge me. Let me be your transatlantic Tinder monitor.”
“Okay, you weirdo.”
“See? That’s why I like you. I’m reasonably certain no one has ever called me a ‘weirdo’ before, at least not to my face.”
“So you like me because I insult you.”
“No, I like you because you tell the truth. Well, that’s one of the reasons.”
“What are the others?”
“Now, now, we don’t want you to get a big head. Also, I need to qualify that statement. You tell the truth, except apparently when rejecting the sexual advances of men. Then you start to worry about their feelings?”
“Yeah, yeah. I take your point. Next time, I’ll make sure my rejection really stings.”
“Relentless honesty, right? That’s what you called it?”
“I was talking about you, but yes.” She could take a cue from him on that front. She slowed as she approached the entrance to the 103rd Street Station. “I’m about to get on the subway, so give me the thirty-second update on the museum project.” Max and his brother, who seemed to have joined forces, had spent the last two months doing historical research and developing a proposal to convert an abandoned mine their family’s company owned into an immersive museum.
“Oh my god, do I ever have news on that front. It turns out there’s a local historical society, and I found a diary that is turning out to be a bit of a jackpot.”
“Really?” The brothers had uncovered evidence of a network of Austrians working with the Soviet Union to supply a tattered resistance movement.
“It’s not a literary diary—don’t get your English prof self too excited. It’s more like a schedule. But it does seem to confirm what I’m learning from the letters, that there were at least ten locals involved in shuttling weapons from Soviet-occupied Hungary across a network that spanned the south of Austria and into the mine for safekeeping.”
“Max! This is all so amazing!”
“Hold on. That’s not the most exciting part. Are you ready for this? I feel like I need a drum roll.”
He sounded so thrilled. Her stomach flopped in vicarious excitement, and she obliged with a silly drum-rolling sound.
“I found a letter from Karina Klein to a man I’ve established as a local leader of the resistance talking about my grandmother.”
“No!”
“Yes. My grandmother technically owned the land the mine was on, and I’m wondering if perhaps Karina approached her, asking if she would lend it out to the resistance.”
“Holy shit, Max!”
“I know. It’s why I’m at the palace. There are a few elderly people who used to work for my family who have retired to Witten. I’m going to see if they remember anything noteworthy about my grandmother in the war years.”
“Is this your grandmother who lived in your cottage?”
“Yes, and I must say it is rather buoying to learn that not all my family members are terrible.”
“You need to write a book!” He was being so typically blasé about this. “You need to write several books! Not only is this a great story, but it’s sort of sounding like there is more to the Karina Klein story than previously believed.”
“Yes, but all I have at this point is the letter from Karina referencing my grandmother—it talks about ‘asking her regarding the matter we spoke about,’ so it’s vague. I have no proof that Karina asked for the use of the mine, or that Oma agreed. But I take your point. Any revision to the biography of Karina will be major news, in Eldovia at least. But honestly I’d rather break the news with the museum itself than with a book—books are your department. We’re starting to interview exhibition designers. I was thinking it might be too early to do that, but apparently not. Museum exhibition design. Who even knew that was a thing? Some of them have amazing ideas for making the space not just a museum underground but a community resource aboveground—having an outdoor concert venue, for example.”