The Beekeeper's Ball: Bella Vista Chronicles Book 2 by Susan Wiggs

though. He put the whole family at risk.”
    Magnus’s smile of memory disappeared. “Times were different then. Early in the occupation, life continued to seem normal for a time, so perhaps we didn’t understand the risk. It wasn’t until later that we grasped the danger and seriousness of the underground activities. In all, the Danes manufactured about ten thousand submachine guns, and many of those originated with my father’s production drawings. He drew everything down to the last detail, and then mislabeled the parts in code so they would appear to be anything but weapons. For all the Jerries knew, the drawings were entirely mundane—parts for bicycles or sewing machines. The guns were then assembled in various places throughout the city—bicycle shops, small machine shops, pump repair facilities—under the pretext of being something else altogether.”
    Mac scrolled to a website on his laptop. “So these production drawings that were preserved by the Danish Historical Society were made by your father?”
    “The ones labeled Bruder Petersen —Petersen Brothers—likely came from him. The Petersen brothers were two boy detectives in a series of novels we used to read as youngsters, so it was actually a nonexistent company.” He studied an enlarged drawing on the screen. “This one is labeled ‘rocker arm for pump relay.’ In actuality, it is a STEN gun trigger. I assume that after my father drew, measured and labeled each individual part, someone else was in charge of the assembly.”
    Isabel exhaled a shaky breath, not even realizing she’d been holding it as she’d listened to the story. The tension her grandfather had described while hiding beneath the cellar stairs had been palpable.
    On the table lay a few pictures of Magnus as a boy; she’d seen them before. He was tall and good-looking, neatly dressed and solemn, his eyes large and darkly fringed, making him appear almost too pretty for a boy. Yet as often as she’d seen the photographs, she had never quite been able to connect the teenage boy with her grandfather. Now the youngster came to life in her mind, a kid avidly reading a comic book, or looking forward to ice-skating with his friends, or crouched beneath the basement stairs, too frightened to speak up.
    “That’s such an extraordinary story. Why have you never told me this before?” she asked him.
    He reached across the space between them, patted her hand. “Life is long,” he said. “I have so many moments to remember, large and small, and I haven’t thought about that incident in decades. I suppose, considering what came after my discovery in the basement, it never occurred to me that this would be of interest to you. Or to anyone.”
    “Of course it is,” Tess assured him. “Your father and his friend must have been incredible.”
    “I’m sure they regarded themselves as ordinary men, simply doing what was right in order to live with themselves. But yes, they were heroes in my eyes.”
    “In anyone’s eyes,” said Isabel. “I like to think I’d be that kind of person, the one who would dare to put myself at risk.”
    “Let us hope you never have to find out,” said her grandfather. “I was very proud of my father, and I miss him to this day.” Magnus’s eyes looked into something distant and unseeable. “However, sometimes I can’t help imagining how our lives would have unfolded if he had not embraced the cause. You see, many of our friends and neighbors simply kept their heads down and endured the occupation, then returned to normal routine after the war. Of course a big part of me, the part that desperately needed my parents and grandfather, wishes Papa would have chosen that path rather than risking himself. Risking the whole family, when it comes down to it.”
    “You’re only human,” said Tess. “Of course you wished that.”
    “Did you know what resistance group your father was affiliated with?” asked Mac.
    “He wasn’t with the Princes, since