“I like it,” he said, nodding eagerly. “We’ve been reading books at home, but it looks so much bigger here. I thought churches were small.”

I laughed. I loved that he wasn’t shy. His hair was sticking up on the side from a cowlick. He wore blue-framed glasses, a stiff white button-down shirt, and black dress pants. He looked like a mini version of his dad. “Me too. Wait till tomorrow when we see the Colosseum. I can’t wait to hear more about it.”

His dark eyes widened. “Lions ate people there,” he confided. “And real-life gladiators fought.”

“I know. I bet when you get home and tell your friends, they’ll be impressed.”

“Mom said I can buy souvenirs for them, so I hope they have gladiators tomorrow.”

Hana beamed and ruffled his hair. “I’m sure they will. Have you graduated high school, Allegra?”

“No, I have one year left. But my grandmother has been wanting to see Italy for a while, and I’ll probably be working next summer, so we decided to do it now.”

“That’s lovely. Kai got all As this year and won first place in the science fair, so we told him he could pick our family vacation. Imagine my surprise when he didn’t pick Disney World.”

Kai shot her a look filled with half frustration, half humor. “Mom, we’ve gone there before. I wanted something different. Dad’s always telling me to think big and don’t be afraid to have a great adventure. Right?”

Hana shot her husband a long-suffering glance and Dan laughed. “Sorry, but he’s right,” Dan said.

“What grade are you in?” I asked.

“Fifth,” he answered. “And my teacher said if I write about my trip this summer, I’ll get a free homework pass and extra credit next year!”

“Good for you. Why’d you pick Italy?” I asked Kai curiously.

He began to tick off items in his list. “The Colosseum, Pompeii, the gondolas in Venice, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But mostly it was the pizza. Pizza is my favorite and Mom said I could have it every day if I wanted to.”

I laughed. He was smart and different from what I’d expected a ten-year-old boy to be like. Dan put his hands up in the air. “That one’s on you,” he said to Hana.

We ate our pasta and chatted about the tour. I learned they lived in Manhattan near Central Park. Dan was an architect and Hana wrote women’s novels. She named a few and I’d actually heard of one, which had been displayed in the Barnes & Noble windows last summer. She said she was taking notes for an upcoming novel about a family traveling through Italy, so I ended up asking her a bunch of questions about writing, which had always fascinated me.