While we sat on the beach, Mom told us again how lucky we were to go to Rome instead of on to Tuscany with her. But no matter how hard she tried, I could tell she was heartbroken.
On our last day in Positano, when we left the beach and went back to the hotel, a letter was waiting for me. I had left the addresses in Naples and Positano with Antoinetta, hoping she would find the time between Catholic day camp and babysitting her cousins to write me. I’d sent her dozens of postcards, of every church and the Blue Grotto and the piazza in Ravello. Of course I had sent postcards to everyone I could think of—Mai Mai Fan, who was in the Berkshires at some kind of genius camp; Sophie, who was on her grandparents’ own island somewhere; even Bianca Plotz at her stupid summer camp in Maine.
Now, when the man behind the desk handed my mother the huge key with the long red tassel, he said, “And a letter for Signorina.”
“Me?” I said, so happy I thought I might fly up the long marble stairs.
I didn’t open it until after we got in the room and a waiter had delivered two limonatas and one Campari and soda. The three of us sat out on the balcony overlooking the houses clinging to the cliff above them, and the blue bay sparkling below.
“It’s from Antoinetta,” I announced.
“How nice,” Mom said sadly, sounding like she missed us already.
The letter was written on old lady stationery, perfumed and flowery.
“Dear Madeline,” I read out loud. “Thank you for the beautiful postcards of San Gennaro’s and all of the other churches, too. Did you see San Gennaro’s blood liquefy? You didn’t happen to mention that. I am having a nice summer. I have watched some of those old black-and-white movies you told me about and I’m sorry to say I thought they were all really boring. Sorry.”
I stopped reading long enough to roll my eyes, then I continued. “I wanted to tell you that my miracle came true, too.” That made me stop reading out loud. I got up and walked into the room and continued to read:
“One day when my father and I went to the cemetery to put flowers on my mother’s grave, we met a woman putting flowers on her husband’s grave, one row away. We all said hello, to be polite. But my father and this woman, Connie Pietro, started to talk. Her husband died of an aneurysm which is really terrible because one minute you’re fine and then you get a headache and boom! You’re dead. At least we had time to prepare. Not Connie. And she’s not very old either. Maybe thirty-five?
“Anyway, that was just three weeks ago, right when you left, and you’re not going to believe it but they are getting married in September! Do you know what she said to me yesterday when we all went to Wright’s Chicken Farm to celebrate? She said, ‘Antoinetta, I hope after we get married you’ll be able to call me Mom.’ Saint Teresa heard my prayers, Madeline. I have to go and make her an offering of thanks. Maybe I’ll wait until you get back home.
“Love from your friend,
“Antoinetta Calabro.
“P.S. I hope this news won’t be a disappointment to your mother?”
“What happened?” my mother called to me. I walked back onto the balcony.
“Her father’s getting married,” I said, still not quite believing it myself.
“Who would want to marry that funny little man?” my mother said.
“They met in the cemetery,” I explained.
“Creepy,” Cody said. “What are they, vampires?”
“It’s a miracle,” I said, folding up the letter and putting it back in the envelope.
Chapter Nine
WHAT I KNEW
As soon as Cody and I got to Rome, I knew one thing right away: Ava Pomme wanted her family to be in Rome, not my family. In New York, we were always just passing through. But this time was different. We had big duffel bags, bulging backpacks, digital cameras. We settled in and it made Ava very unhappy. It was in the nervous way she moved around the hot, stuffy apartment, her hands fluttering oddly, her face pinched. The way she said to our father, “Why don’t you take your kids to the park?” And, “Could you talk to your daughter about cleaning up after herself?” New lines had been drawn, I thought. And then I realized that maybe they weren’t so new. Maybe I just never noticed before. Even Baby Zoe was crankier than usual, fussing all night in the stark, unfamiliar room where her crib, unlike the one she slept in back in New York, had no happy dangling creatures, no tiny Brahms lullaby playing. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Zoe began to scream, a loud, shrill scream that woke everyone.