Excerpt Time!

You’ve just found out that your grandparents were spies during World War II. Choose your own adventure: do you ask questions about this revelation, or do you focus on finding out whether the love of your life had met you when you were a kid?

Yup, the latter!

I blinked back unshed tears, flipping listlessly through the paperwork. I couldn’t believe that these people knew more about my life than I ever had. Why wasn’t I privy to this? I mean, my own mother! Why hadn’t Dad said anything? Or Oma? Opa and I were never close, but Oma should have—

Nathan interrupted my thoughts. “Violet,” he said softly. “They were trying to protect you. I remember when you were a teenager and–“

So he HAD met me before! Did he know then, who I was?

“–and your father was telling me about the things he had seen you do, even though you didn’t know you were doing them. He was worried for you. He and your mother had decided they didn’t want you to know about that side of them, because they were afraid you’d be too vulnerable.”

“Did we meet?”

Silence.

Finally, he had the decency to look down. I heard a clock ticking, over and over again. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. “Yes,” he said quietly, finding the contours of the table extremely interesting.

“Did you know who I was then?”

“No.”

I exhaled, not knowing I had been holding my breath.

He continued, looking up and faintly smiling. “I just thought you were a cute, impatient teenager.”

“That’s creepy, you know.”

He snorted. “I’m not that much older than you, Violet.”

“You were when I was a teen.”