Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(48)

“Do you ever eat anything that’s actually food?” Chloe asks.

“Popcorn is made from corn. So, technically, it’s a vegetable.”

“I’m still stuck on Die Eichel,” she announces, no preamble. “Why would Mormor write that beside the newspaper clipping? What does an acorn have to do with … anything?”

Miles tosses a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “In the podcast, we cut to dramatic music there. Just saying.”

“Dude. Focus.”

“My bad.”

“All I could find is that the oak tree is the national tree of Germany and a symbol of bravery but that didn’t take me anywhere. Then I wondered if the acorn was something in the German Girls League—you know, like how there are Brownies and then there are Girl Scouts?”

“If you say so. Not up on my Girl Scouts. Except for Thin Mints. Which are the superior cookie.”

“No argument.” Chloe unwraps a green apple Jolly Rancher. The blocky candy slurs her words like she’s drunk. “Anyway, it’sth not. I looked it up. The only other thingsth I found were a couple of prethschoolsth and a therapy center in Berlin. Stho, basthically, I can’t find any connecthion between the missthing teensth and Die Eichel.”

He doesn’t want to say what he’s thinking, which is that Mormor had a stroke. Die Eichel could mean nothing—or nothing that’s relevant to their case.

“Ms. Diaz says that everything’s connected. We just haven’t found our connection yet.”

“Wha’ ha’ you go’?”

“Was that English?”

Chloe pushes the candy to one side of her mouth. “Thsorry. What have you got?”

Miles tells her about his research into Nacht und Nebel and the mention of the dissidents in Kleinwald plus what he’s found on Rudolf Jaeger.

“So there was a resistance movement in Kleinwald,” Chloe says.

“Maybe?” Miles tosses a popcorn kernel in the air and catches it in his mouth like a SeaWorld dolphin. “One mention of some pamphlets doesn’t make for a full-blown underground, you know? But this Rudolf Jaeger, he was the head of the SS in Kleinwald. A scary guy. Just seems really coincidental that he gets seriously wounded the same day that Hanna, Sophie, and Oskar go missing.”

Behind Chloe in the corner is a giant stuffed panda with some fluff poking out.

“Oh. Hey. It’s Twenty-Eight-Dollar Panda! How ya been, pal?”

Chloe glances over her shoulder and back. Even through the screen it’s like she can see into his soul. It’s always been this way between them. She is the one person he can never bullshit. “Yup. Still here.”

“That was a fun time,” Miles tries.

“Yeah,” Chloe says. “It was.”

“Chloe!” Joyce’s voice carries down the hallway and then she bursts into Chloe’s room. “Honey! Can you come to the kitchen, please?”

“I’m doing homework with Miles.”

Joyce puts her face up to the screen. It’s like looking at a time-lapse version of Chloe if Chloe decided to go full Real Housewives of Wealthy Brooklyn.

“Hiiii, Miles! How are you, honey? Chloe told me you’re all alone? I’ve been so worried about you!”

“Thanks. I’m fine, Mrs. Eisenberg.” All he hears is that Chloe has been talking about him.

“If you need anything, you just say so. I can leave chicken soup on your front porch.” Joyce waves a little vial at Chloe. “I just need five minutes.”

“Can I finish my conversation first?” Chloe says with a generous helping of irritation.

Joyce puts up her hands. “Fine. No rush. But it would be best if we could do it now and get it over with, okay?”

“I don’t even want to ask,” Miles says once Joyce leaves.

“23andMe. They messed up the first one,” Chloe explains.

“How can they mess up saliva?”

“Right? Anyway. Joyce is making them run it again. She’s really holding out for that Swedish royalty thing.”

Miles thinks of the family of friends the Moms Squared have built in Brooklyn over the years. All this talk about blood relations feels like bullshit; to him, family is the one you make.

“Mormor is the only one who could ever get Joyce to stand down.” Chloe adopts her grandmother’s accent again. “People survived the Blitz, Joyce. Your Amazon package coming late is not worth lamentation. I wish I were more like her. You know she never holds a grudge? She says it’s too much weight to carry.”

“That’s pretty deep,” Miles says.

Chloe shifts the slivered Jolly Rancher to the front of her tongue. “But what people did during the war … do you think you could forgive them for that? Because I could never.”

Miles wonders if Chloe has forgiven him.

“It all seems so unfair,” she says.

“What happened in the war?”

“Well, yeah, that, obviously. But I meant Mormor. She’s such a good person. I hate what the stroke is doing to her. It breaks my heart.”

Miles doesn’t know what to say that doesn’t sound like a shitty drugstore sympathy card. The truth is that being a good person is no protection against bad things. Life isn’t fair and all anyone can do is try to make it a little fairer in whatever small way they can. This is not the thing to say. He thinks about Mom Lisa. He’s seen her in the ER, comforting family members, reassuring a patient that relief for their pain is coming and that they are in good hands. “I’m sorry she can’t talk,” he says after a moment.