“Thank you,” we chorused.
She beamed at us. “Anything else?”
We shook our heads. I took a bite of my pancakes, finding it surprisingly deep in flavor, and deliciously soaked in butter. “Wow, these areexcellent.”
Noah cut his burrito methodically in half. “What counts as useful ways?”
“What? Oh, for money. You know, donating it toward useful causes and stuff.”
“Like?”
I shrugged, swirling two square bites of pancake through the maple syrup on my plate. “Well, what are you passionate about?”
His gaze flicked up to mine. He smiled slightly. “I know whatIconsider useful causes. I wanted your take.”
“Oh.” Hot embarrassment flushed through me and I focused in on my food for a moment. Why had I assumed he wanted an explanation about how to make an impact?
He took pity. “I like the Nantucket Conservation Foundation.”
“Oh?” If I kept asking questions, maybe my embarrassment would drain away. “Why?”
He shrugged. “My mom works in ecological conversation and my grandma gardens, so I guess I’ve always been tuned into theenvironment. And—well, my life has a huge carbon footprint, and my family uses up lots of resources, and I think it’s important to offset it if you can.”
I stared at him with surprise. “That’s nice.”
He looked embarrassed, turning to stare distractedly across the patio. When he turned back, his expression had shuttered. He leaned forward, a cryptographer faced with a code he couldn’t quite crack. “What’s it going to take to get you to leave this letter thing alone?”
I blinked. “Oh, I’m not going to leave it alone.”
“Why not?”
“Why would I? How can you ask me to let my family history slip away?”
“I’m sure there’s other ways you can find things out. Other people you can ask.”
“You’re so sure about that?” I tilted my head. “It’s not like the Nazis left so many alive to tell their stories.”
He paused, then blew out a breath. “You’re kidding.”
I smiled. Checkmate. “I’m really not.”
“That’s not playing fair.”
“I know.” You couldn’t really turn away people trying to learn about their survivor grandparents. Sort of a faux pas. I took a bite of my pancakes.
He frowned at me. “Why don’t you know anything about her?”
“Oh. She came here when she was super young, so she didn’t remember much. We don’t know where she’s from originally—somewhere in Germany—or if there’s any living family left over there. And even what she did remember, she didn’t like to talk about. Mom says a lot of survivors don’t like to talk.”
“She’s a Holocaust survivor?”
“Yeah. Well, to be honest, she didn’t identify as a survivor, because she didn’t live through the war in Europe. She came over here when she was four, right before the war started.”
He dropped his fork to his plate. “She came over before the war. From Germany.”
“Yeah.”
“With her family?”
