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Modern Summerlandian art, it turns out, is heavily fish-and-potato themed. Tiny felt potatoes and acrylic fishes, spiky fish crafted from aluminum and steel, abstract block prints mixed with two-story-high installations. “It’s powerful,” Flynn says into the microphone hidden in the collar of his tuxedo. He stuffs his hands deep in his pockets, keeping an appropriate distance from me: close enough to smell the spritz of perfume on my wrists, far enough that it isn’t obvious—to anyone—that we’ve just felt each other up in the coatroom. “Does it make me sound uncultured if I have no idea what it is?”

Shoulder to shoulder, we’re staring at the same installation, which appears to be…a gilded potato? With…swordfish emerging from both ends? If you are, then I am , I tell Flynn, silently tipping my head, my body still thrumming from his contact. I force myself to redact any sexual thoughts about him, like lines in a classified CIA case report, until all that’s left are long black bars.

Respectfully, we move along, past a mural with reflective glass, and it messes with my mind, how I truly believe—at first, just for a split second—that I’m seeing Sofia in the mirror. She stares back at me in a hundred shattered pieces, her eyebrows crunched together, like she’s about to ask me tough questions: Do you know what happened to me, Max? And you’re the one holding it all together?

“Madame Prime Minister,” Lars says, bringing over the first guest. I unclench my teeth, shaking out my hands, and so it begins. People filter through my security, offering introductions. I field several ambassadors, an Italian cultural attaché, and a handful of the museum’s donors. Word of my miraculous recovery from laryngitis doesn’t seem to have traveled far—thank goodness—so I’m able to get by with simple nods, tempered smiles. I’m gracious. I listen.

The cultural attaché tells me that the Italian arts community is delighted by the early response to the exhibition (and that the swordfish potato clearly represents the historic struggle for dominance between Summerland’s fishing and agricultural industries). The donors largely pass along stories about how they amassed their millions (oil and gas; a jewelry company; yacht manufacturing). The youngest ambassador talks about his cat, also named Giorgio. Cat Giorgio, apparently, has a rich history, rising from the streets of Sicily in a mob-like feral cat community. He attacks anything that moves, or breathes, or thinks about breathing (but in a fun, playful way, ha-ha! ), and has an extensive social media following, including the president of Croatia and two Korean pop idols.

Unsurprisingly, it’s my favorite conversation.

Least favorite is with another ambassador, who tries to grill me about Summerlandian-Belarusian relations. He reminds me of a toad with anger issues, spluttering so badly that I consider reaching for one of the glasses of prosecco floating around, taking a glug before my face can betray anything specific. (I don’t. Flynn’s warned me not to drink anything from open trays; dehydration is better than poisoning.) I excuse myself with a stilted smile, pretending that someone really needs to speak with me.

Turns out, that’s true.

“ Ciao! Ciao! I’m Vittoria Morelli!” A representative for the museum has been waiting in the wings, and as soon as I’m in earshot, she pounces. “Your team and I, we spoke over email?” Her voice is too eager, too excited, and an instinctual part of me says Run .

“She’s been cleared,” Flynn assures me in my earpiece, but that’s not what I’m worried about. She’s clutching a thick, light blue envelope, the color of baby’s breath, and I have no clue what’s in it.

“We are honored to have you here tonight, Prime Minister Christiansen,” she says after a quick security check, swaying up to me. “And I am overjoyed to hear that your voice has returned.”

Shit. Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” whispers Flynn. He’s been scoping out the installation next to me, and is now—quite obviously—trying to figure out a smooth way to barrel into the conversation.

“I know how disappointed you were,” Vittoria continues in a burst, literally boxing out Flynn with her body, “not to be able to give the speech, especially for the art you love so much, but it seems you can now! I have it all printed. Your team sent a copy over email.”

With this, she hands me the envelope.

Flynn shakes his head in the background. No, no.

But I…take it.

Why did you just take that envelope, Max? Politeness? Diplomacy? Tucking the speech promptly under my armpit, brain working overtime, I step back as Vittoria advances forward, practically herding me around the corner of a muralled wall.

Where there’s a podium.

A podium and a growing crowd of people.

“ Signore e signori! ” Vittoria shouts with a startling lack of hesitation, strutting over to speak into the microphone. “ Senza ulteriori indugi, la prima ministra di Summerland, Sofia Christiansen! ”

A round of applause rises from the audience, every patron in the museum suddenly circling, setting down their glasses of prosecco to listen, and is that Giorgio ? Not cat Giorgio. Human Giorgio. He’s whistling between his fingers and clapping, the sound of accordions rising up to offer a cheery, Summerlandian-polka-themed introduction.

An actual assassin wouldn’t be entirely unwelcome right now.

Flynn can’t yank me offstage without arousing suspicion, but his voice is loud and clear through the earpiece. “Max, get away from that podium.” I’ve frozen, deer-like, body pelted with the stringent bleat of accordions. Ah, and here’s the arctic flute, along with my eye twitch. How bad would I look—how bad would Sofia look—if I pulled out at the last second? “Max, just wave a hand, greet the audience, and turn around.”

I could do that.

I could back away in my heels.

But this seems like one of those pivotal moments where I need to make a choice: Do I skulk away as the body double, or do I give myself the opportunity to excel in this role, for the sake of Summerland? Signs on the wall are clear: No filming inside the gallery. No cameras to capture the speech if I severely tank. The risk is moderately low. I can…read the speech cold, can’t I? If I gargle my voice, tell everyone I’m recovering from an illness, maybe the accent will be passable?

In every spare moment, every bit of downtime, I’ve been practicing the roundness of her vowels, the slight rolling of her r , the soft way her voice lilts. She clearly enunciates her consonants, singsongs her sentences. Ideally, I could use another couple of days to hammer it down, but maybe— maybe —what I’ve done is enough?

“Good afternoon,” I say strongly into the microphone, as soon as the polka music halts. Feedback squeals through the gallery, the undercurrent of Flynn’s groan rumbling through my earpiece. How’d the good afternoon sound? Only two words. Passable. I blink steadily as I open the envelope, tugging out the speech and unfolding the paper to find…

Norwegian.

Norwegian?

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I mean, objectively, it makes sense. Many people in the crowd are Summerlandian expats, and Summerlandians speak Norwegian just as frequently as English. Even so, my fingers curl, gripping both sides of the podium, suppressing the tremor in my hands. The words on the page are soupy, the first sentence slapping me like an insult: Velkommen, venner av landet v?rt, og tusen takk for at dere er her i dag for denne store og lovende anledningen. Beyond Velkommen , I’m stumped.

Tusen? Lovende? Anledningen?

Those could be different types of potato, for all I know. They could be species of fish.

“Max?” Flynn tries again. “You’ve got to make a move here.”

Right. Moves. What are the moves? Gazing out over the hush of the crowd, I realize I have three options. None of them are good. Option one: sound out the words, in a language I’ve rarely heard spoken aloud, and hope that no one questions—like Gail did—if I’m having a stroke. Option two: flee the stage in as calm a manner as possible, as Flynn instructed, and let the prime minister’s team develop a reasonable retroactive excuse. Food poisoning? Security threat?

Or…

The third option dangles itself, tantalizingly, frighteningly, in front of me. Call it stubborn grit. Call it a bone-deep desire to get something right, but I go for it, snatching it, diving headfirst into a speech that I’ll create—in English—on the fly.

“Good afternoon,” I say again to the crowded hall, thinking, Actually maybe I should’ve gone for option two? Flynn’s shuffled to the side of my vision, visibly pacing, wiping a palm across his clean-shaven face, and I don’t know what’s more comforting: to catch his eye, have him support me through this, or ignore him entirely. “Thank you all for being here today for this auspicious occasion.”

Is it just me, or does my Summerlandian accent sound…so-so? I’m channeling Nana Frida, the way she spoke after all those years in Summerland as a girl. How she used to explain recipes over her kitchen table, pointing out the ingredients in old books, her fingers tracing the letters. Words flow from my mouth, no longer the parody of a Norwegian sweater salesman. I’m using my most authoritative voice, like I’m in my own restaurant kitchen, calling out orders during the dinner rush.

“You’ll have to excuse my voice,” I say, adding extra scratch. “I lost it for a little while, but I couldn’t miss this exhibit, showcasing the talent of Summerland’s artists. We, as a country, are thrilled to be here, in Italy—building a bridge—through the arts, between our two great nations.”

Flynn’s perked up slightly in the background, like, Not bad, Starfish. Not bad.

I tell myself to keep going.

“Now, I had an entirely different speech prepared, but walking around this museum, I was reminded of my grandmother.” According to Sofia’s biographical information, she was close to her grandmother, too—so this’ll stick. “She had photographs of Summerland’s coastline in every room around her house, and I used to stare at them for hours , hours and hours and hours, hearing the water in those pictures. That’s something that art can make us do—feel as if we’re there, our feet on the rocks, and I’m very…I’m very proud to have that heritage. I’m proud to witness the next generation of artists, who’ll reach out, grip our hearts, and put the sound of the sea in our ears.”

Is this speech too airy? Does that matter? Nana Frida’s the strongest tie I have to Summerland; she’d grind almonds for prince cake and tell me about her parents’ gray-shingled house, how it blended into the rocky silver landscape. She’d wake up at dawn to fish, cold pebbles under her toes.

No one’s looking at me like I’ve gone too far down an unbeaten path. In the corner of my eye, I see Flynn pause his pacing.

Gripping the sides of the podium harder, I say, before I can think better of it, “A long time ago, someone gave me a book of poetry by the American author Mary Oliver, who asked what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? ” Flynn. That person was Flynn. On a Sunday road trip to Bar Harbor, when we ducked into a little indie book shop to dodge the rain; he’d underlined the passage in black ink and written in the margin, Restaurant? “Artists, Summerland’s artists, have answered that question, answered that call, and they’ve made beautiful, beautiful things. This afternoon, this evening, we celebrate them.”

That’s it. That’s enough.

I’ll quit while I’m ahead.

Flynn’s staring at me, expression unreadable, as I pick up the discarded Norwegian speech, tapping the papers commandingly on the podium, like Sofia always does. “Thank you.”