The next morning, precisely ten o’clock. The shared-flat kitchen was gleaming so much you could have performed surgery in it—if you ignored the lingering smell of burnt dough products. Lukas had tried to iron away his nerves by crafting a tiny bow tie for Lohmeyer the swan out of duct tape.
Grandma Hildegard sat at the head of the table. In front of her was not our chaotic pile of scraps, but a perfectly organised binder. “Sit down,” she said, and her voice no longer sounded like an interrogation, but like a verdict tempered with mercy.
“I’ve checked your ‘accounts’,” she began, tapping a sheet of paper. “The two thousand euros for the utilities have been transferred. I’ve put the rest of the money into a savings account for ‘real emergencies’—and no, Lukas, an empty beer crate does not count as an emergency.”
Mia and I held our breath. “And the family?” Mia asked quietly. “What are you telling them?”
Hildegard smiled a thin but genuine smile. “I told Uncle Herbert you decided on a ‘secret, spiritual ceremony’ in Portugal and that yesterday’s celebration was just a dress rehearsal for the elite. He was so drunk he believed it. Beate believes anything that sounds like destiny anyway.”
She stood up and smoothed her coat. “You’re terrible actors, but first-class crisis managers. Finn-Alexander, your jacket was an insult to my profession, but your expression when Karl-Friedrich shot out of the dress… that was pure gold.”
She walked to the door, then stopped briefly in front of Lohmeyer the swan. “Keep the bird. Let it remind you that every lie needs a solid foundation—preferably made of oak wood or duct tape.”
When the door closed behind her, absolute silence filled the flat for a full minute. “We’re free?” Lukas asked in disbelief.
“We’re debt-free,” Mia corrected him, looking at me. “But we’re still married. At least for the next two hundred people on Facebook who liked the video of your torn jacket.”
Lukas grabbed his jacket. “You know what? I’m going to return the rented toilet now. If I bribe the driver, he might give us back the deposit for the unused rolls of toilet paper.”
He disappeared, and suddenly it was just Mia and me. The kitchen still smelled faintly of lavender and the end of a very long nightmare.
“Finn?” Mia said, taking a step towards me. She was back in her grey hoodie, no six metres of tulle in sight. “Yes?” “That lavender shower gel thing… you can keep it. But if you ever try to ‘hide’ me in a warehouse again, I’ll sue you for everything you don’t own.”
I grinned. “Deal. So what do we do with the rest of the day?”
Mia looked at Lohmeyer the swan, then at the pan of burnt Maultaschen. “I think we order pizza. Real pizza. And we split the bill—like a perfectly normal, completely dishonest, happy shared flat.”
I took her hand. “Sounds like a plan. But don’t even think about putting Maultaschen on it.”
Outside the window, a bird was chirping—maybe it was just Karl-Friedrich triumphantly sprinting across the roof. The heating gurgled contentedly, the debts were paid, and somewhere in Liechtenstein a real professor was probably wondering why his name was on a certificate in a dusty warehouse in Germany.
It was the perfect wedding. Almost.