After a while the taxi came around the corner of the empty road with Mom in it and it stopped. In the headlights we could see that Jonathan was pretty cut up by the fall. He had cactus pins stuck in his shoulder and cheek and his leg was bent the wrong way.

On the way back from the emergency room at the hospital in Santa Margherita Mom and I sat in the back of the cab holding hands and we never said a word until we reached the communal parking lot at Portofino. Mom paid the driver and we walked back to the Hotel Nazionale. About halfway there I looked at Mom and could see her face in the pale light of the street lamp. She looked worried sick.

“Mom, I will never tell. You can count on that.”

Mom was too embarrassed to look at me because now we had gotten Jonathan Edwards to the hospital I guess it was all sort of sinking into Moms head what this must look like to me. So she didn’t turn her head to look at me but just bit her lip hard and her chin quivered. Then she said real quiet and small, “Thank you.”

Chapter 25

I DIDN’T WAKE UP until late the next morning. When I did finally open my eyes I lay in my bed staring at the cracks in the plaster of my ceiling and listening to the strange sounds echoing in the air shaft coming from other people’s toilets.

Suddenly I sat bolt upright. Jennifer! She was going to wait out on the rocks and I was in bed! I was late; it was already ten-fifteen. She was waiting and I wasn’t even up yet!

I pulled on my swimming trunks, grabbed a T-shirt, my goggles, snorkel, and flippers, and raced out the door, down the hall, and out of the hotel.

When I got to the high point on the path I couldn’t help stopping to look over in the light of day to see if I could tell where Jonathan Edwards had fallen when he had jumped last night. Sure enough, a fig tree branch was broken about halfway down and the arm of a prickly pear cactus was torn off and lying on the ground. Then I looked at the spot where I had been sitting on the ledge and I noticed that the fern growing out of the wall was all wilted from my squeezing it so tight.

Jennifer had waited. When I swam out to the rocks I was in a panic because I was sure she wouldn’t be there. But when I climbed out of the water I saw she had waited for me because I saw her goggles were lying on a rock near the water.

Jennifer stood up from behind a rock and said, “I thought that at least they knew how to keep time in Switzerland!”