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.