“They were so in love.” Mom sounded relieved to be able to get this secret off her chest all these years. “Frederico loved deeply.”

Does his son love deeply too?

“Forty-four years ago, her parents disapproved. Fred was a poor fisherman’s son from Spain, resettled in Italy, and moved around in Athens. A wanderer, you could say,” Mom explained. “He didn’t have the usual skills to get him a day job. But he could steal. And steal very well. He was the best thief I knew. Still, he couldn’t stay put in one place.”

“Hard to settle down if you move around all the time.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Mom shifted. She was clearly uncomfortable. “I met Agneta at a coffee shop at the university in Athens. I was an exchange student in graduate school at that time. She became my tour guide around town. We struck up a friendship.”

Helen stared at the egg in her hand.

“She told me about this guy she had met who gave her jewelry. Agneta liked shiny things. But she was still living at home, and her parents had a bad feeling about Fred, who didn’t seem to have a proper job.”

“How old was he then?” Helen asked.

“In his late twenties, maybe? He could have been thirty years old. Something like that. I didn’t ask.”

“So he fell in love with a local girl.”

“Originally, Agneta was from Thessaloniki, but their parents move to Athens when she was a teen.”

Helen waited for Mom to continue her story.

“Yes, they were infatuated with each other. Agneta was only twenty at that time, though she had many boyfriends. She never brought them to her parents’ house.” Cough. Cough. “We worked out a scheme. Fred would come to my flat to see Agneta. I would go shopping for a couple of hours. As things turned out, she got pregnant. She gave birth to a boy the next year.”

Five years older than Reuben. “So Reuben has an older half-brother, then.”

“Can’t be sure. We don’t know if Fred was the father. Like I told you, she slept around.” Mom shook her head. “But Fred was deeply in love, and to him, she could do no wrong.”

“They never married?”

“This was before Fred met Reuben’s mom, whom he also did not marry. I guess maybe he was waiting for Agneta to say yes. I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Agneta didn’t want to be a wife or mother.”

“So… Who raised the child?”

“She gave him up for adoption.” Mom sighed. “I finished university in Athens, met your dad, changed my career, and moved on. We loved being private investigators. It was a lot of fun for many years. But I wanted something more.”

“Like skirting the law?” Helen frowned.

“Well, fifteen years ago, your dad and I were back in Athens. And some old friends called me.”

“Frederico?”

Mom nodded. “He and Ondrej were still hunting for the lost Amber Room. Asked if I wanted to be a part of it. I knew that your dad would say it couldn’t end well, but I was rebellious. I did it without his knowledge.”

“How did you get out of the country?”

“I waited until your dad was away on a business trip.”

Helen tried to recall that time when dad had been alive. “Sabine and I must’ve been in college. I don’t remember you and dad traveling separately.”

“We were always together. Except a couple of times. That was one of the times. The other one was when he flew to Toronto to see his sick grandmother. I was down with the flu and had to stay at home.”

“And you gave Sabine the flue.” The past should stay in the past. Too many memories to process.

Helen stared at the eggs.

“By then, Reuben was twenty-three years old,” Mom said. “When I traveled with Fred to Thessaloniki to find Agneta, Reuben assumed I was the woman his father had fallen in love with. It worked into our narrative.” Mom coughed again.

“How old was she then?” Helen calculated that Mom had been in her early fifties when the friends reconnected.

“Fifty, poor, suffering, and married to an out-of-work loser. We all felt pity for her. Fred gave her a Petros egg, not knowing she would try to sell it. Several days later, her husband was dead.”

Helen waited for more.

“The catch was that Fred was there in the house when her husband was shot in the head.”

“What was he doing there?”

“He was with Agneta in her bedroom, talking about Frederico supporting Agneta. Her husband walked in on them, and didn’t like what he heard. Didn’t want handout. Whatever. A fight broke out. Somewhere in the middle of the fight a gun went off.”

“Who’s gun?”

Mom said she didn’t know. “Fred was arrested for a murder to which he had confessed. Only I know this, but he said I wasn’t to say a word.”

“You kept your word.”

“For fifteen years.”

“So you let everybody think Frederico and you had something going to take the focus off Agneta.”

Mom nodded.

“What did Dad say about it?”

“He hated the idea.”

“But you gave your word, though it was the wrong word.”

Mom seemed to be deep in thought, as if debating whether to continue. “Three weeks after Fred went to prison, Agneta walked in front of a bus. I spent the next several years visiting Fred in prison to continue the charade.”

“But she was dead.”

“Frederico insisted on keeping her memory pristine.”

Helen had nothing to say to that.

“The egg?” she asked instead.

“It was never recovered.”

“How many eggs did your little band of thieves steal?”

“Only three that I know of. That’s what Ondrej kept for us. But Fred and Ondrej had been egg-hunting long before we met up again. They didn’t tell me more than what I needed to know. I guess they were afraid I might have a change of heart and turn them in to the authorities.”

“When will you tell Reuben the truth about you and his father?” Helen asked.

“Soon.”

Helen was mulling over how to respond to Mom when she heard a spring snap on the egg that Mom had said Agneta tried to sell some fifteen years ago.

And just like that, the egg opened.