Page 89 of What Happens in Amsterdam

It’s a desperate rescue, poorly planned but entirely necessary.

We’ve kept this up long enough.

The phone slips from my mother’s hands. “Danika. What are you saying?”

I swallow hard, aware of eight pairs of eyes burning into me. “We’re not—we’re not in love.” My gaze flicks to Wouter for just a moment, long enough to clock his reaction: an almost imperceptible recoil before he steels himself once again. As though needing physical proof, I hold out my hand and give the ring a few tugs before it slides off my finger. “It’s a green-card marriage. All of this is fake.”

Twenty-four

Instantly I wish I couldtake it back. Maybe I could handle my parents assuming I made a spontaneous decision in the name of love—but I’m not at all prepared for them thinking I’ve committed an international crime. Anneke and Roos are frantically translating for Maartje, and Phoebe’s and Maya’s faces are all concern.

And Wouter—I can’t even make eye contact with him as I stand there in his mother’s house, the ring in my trembling hand.

The guests in the backyard make no mystery of the fact that they’re listening in. Sanne and Evi have hands pressed to their mouths, and Iulia’s giving me a somber nod, this revelation confirming what she suspected all along.

That I am a huge fucking liar.

Roos is the one to speak first, in this shaky gut-punch of a way. “You mean…you and my brother aren’t really together?”

I want so badly to reassure her, to tell her thereissomething between Wouter and me, even if I don’t have the words for it—but my parents’ panic is more urgent. My mother scoops up her crackedphone and drops into a chair, like she just can’t take any more surprises while standing up, and my father shoves up the sleeves of his shirt, because he’s not used to a home without AC and it’s grown balmy in here with all of us yelling.

“I don’t understand,” he says. “Is this…some kind of immigration scam?”

“I…wouldn’t use those exact words.” I’m too warm in this dress, the lace and tulle too delicate for this conversation. “I lost my job. A couple weeks after I got here. The company went under, and I was here on a work visa. If I didn’t find another job, I wouldn’t have been able to stay in the country.”

“And you never told us?” There’s some amount of sympathy in my mother’s voice, the kind that drags me back to those dark moments when I imagined crawling home to them.

I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t handle it, I don’t say.

“Danibear. You know you could have come home. We would have paid for your ticket,” she continues, as though the cost of the flight was all that was holding me back. There’s no way to rationalize this in their minds, not when they’ve wanted to protect me from every bad thing that could be waiting for me out there.

Next to us, Wouter’s speaking in rapid Dutch with his family, so quick I can only catch a couple words here and there.Apartmentandgrandmotherandwife. Anneke’s expression of shock, a hand held to her heart.

My mother turns to Phoebe. “Did you know about this?”

She grimaces, eyes flicking over to me as I shrug, giving her permission to tell them the truth. “I might have. Yes.”

“And you didn’t think to let us know that your sister was making such a careless decision?”

“It wasn’t careless,” I insist. “We didn’t just get drunk in Vegas and decide to get married because it sounded fun.”

My mother lets out a sarcastic snort. “Well, that’s a relief.”

Maya, who’s been watching everything from the Van Leeuwens’ couch, hoists herself to her feet, and Phoebe rushes to help her the rest of the way up. “Phee, maybe we should go for a walk? I could really use a walk.”

“Go ahead,” I say, and squeeze her hand to let her know I’ll be okay.

“I wonder—” My father pinches his lips together after my sister and her wife leave, as though unsure whether he wants to say this at all.

“Go ahead, Bill,” my mother encourages.

“I wonder if we should have put our foot down when she told us this cockamamie Amsterdam plan.”

This ignites a new flare of frustration. “I didn’t ask for your permission,” I say. “I’m thirty years old. Even if you’d chased me all the way to the airport, I still would have left.”

At that, Wouter extricates himself from the conversation with his family and faces my father. “With all due respect, sir,” he says. “Dani isn’t some kid who doesn’t know what she’s doing. Maybe it seemed ridiculous to you, but I think she’s truly happy here.” He meets my eyes, as though wanting to confirm it’s true, and I nod while my heart swells with affection for him.

“And with all due respect to you,” my father counters, because now he is no longer former host to an exchange student, he is the belligerent father of the bride, “you barely know her.”

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