“They divorce after the avalanche?” the nun said.
“Yes,” I said, like something bad was caught in my throat.
“They funny things,” the nun said. “Miracles. I no explain how your father survive avalanche or how you knew what you knew. This stays a mystery, eh? But I think miracles come from inside.” The nun tapped her chest, hard enough for the wooden rosary beads she wore to quiver. “Then you feel like Saint Madeline of Providence, even if you not official saint. Basta,” she said, slapping her hands together again. “Ciao, Santa Magdalena,” the nun whispered.
I didn’t want her to leave. For one thing, she definitely knew more than Antoinetta, who had left out some major milestones on the road to sainthood. For another, I felt like she could look right into my heart.
Cody started calling to me, “Come on! Come on!”
“My brother,” I said, turning to explain to my nun. But she wasn’t there. I looked around. She wasn’t anywhere. “Hello?” I said.
“Hello!” Cody whispered back, waving his arms like he was parking an airplane.
When I still didn’t budge, he came running to get me.
“Come on, already,” he said. He tugged on my arm.
“Did you see that nun I was talking to?” I asked him.
“All I saw was some dead saint’s ear. These relic things are gross.” I knew my mother had just taught him that word and I smiled.
He tugged and he yanked, but I couldn’t move. It was like I was taking root, right there.
I inhaled. “Do you smell anything?” I asked him as the faint scent of roses filled my nose.
“Yeah,” Cody said. “I smell church.”
Finally, all I smelled was church, too: incense and wax and stale air. My feet moved again, and I let Cody take me out of there.
After Naples and Capri we went to the Amalfi Coast and spent two nights in Ravello and four nights in Positano. The town, with its pastel-colored houses, hung from a cliff as if it might tumble at any moment. One of my vocabulary words rose up when I saw it: precarious.
“I hope we don’t fall into the ocean,” I told Cody when we first checked in, hoping to scare him. Now that my offical sainthood was further away than I’d thought, I could be bad again.
“That’s silly,” Cody giggled, disappointing me.
“Just as well that you guys are going to Rome,” Mom said, trying to cheer herself up. “Tuscany is just vineyards and beautiful landscapes. Boring for you guys. You’ll get to see the Colosseum and the Forum and the Trevi Fountain. And be sure to throw a coin in because that means you’ll go back to Rome.”
My heart swelled. I felt it getting bigger and bigger. My father was in Italy. We were all in Italy. I let myself imagine the four of us doing Italian things—twirling spaghetti and being a family.
“Is Daddy alone?” Cody said, narrowing his eyes. “Or with you-know-who?”
Mom pulled Cody onto her lap and buried her nose in his hair. “With you-know-who,” she said.
I was getting used to switching parents. It no longer felt like stones in my chest. Now it felt like small dips, like the funny lurching feeling you get right before your roller coaster car takes a hill. Of course my father would be here with Ava Pomme and Zoe. They were a family. And I would be a part of that—for a while, anyway.
“I don’t want to go to Rome,” Cody said, and it was the first time since we got to Italy that he sounded like his whining old self. “I want to see beautiful scenery.”
“Then look right over there,” Mom said, pointing off in the distance.
I looked, too. It was impossible not to look. The beautiful sea glistening in the sunlight. The pastel houses. The tiled rooftops.
“I’m hungry,” Mom said. “I think it’s time for the beach and some lunch and some shopping. What do you say?”
My mother really was beautiful in Italy. The sunlight made her look soft and young. She’d bought a coral and turquoise necklace and she wore it every day. Against her tanned skin it seemed like an exotic and magical thing.
Our hotel was at the end of a steep road. When we left it to go to the beach, we had to navigate crowded streets as small as alleys, too small for cars to pass. Our mother bought pottery, mugs, and platters painted with brightly colored animals. I got a bathing suit and a pair of sandals.
Every afternoon we ate lunch at Bocca de Bucca on the beach, then we took our tatami mats and laid them on the pebbly sand. I collected sea glass. Some pieces were pottery shards, others were glass worn dull by the ocean.