Rachael really got mad and she screamed, “You cannot speak in that way, you are a . . . a . . .” and she started to cry but I didn’t care.

I shouted, “I saw her kissing Jonathan Edwards!”

Then Rachael put her hands over her ears and said, “I won’t listen to these things! You are a wicked boy!” And she ran off the beach and left all her stuff lying there. I sat down and I felt bad because I hadn’t meant to tell on Mom but it sort of slipped out.

Rachael didn’t come back so I picked up her towels and her Bible she always carried with her, and I walked back to Portofino. I was feeling sad so I didn’t even stop to try and catch the lizards on the wall but went straight back to the Hotel Nazionale where I put Rachael’s stuff outside her room.

Then I walked up to the church and knelt down in front of Mary. I prayed and I remembered I had never said thank you to her for the miracle of Jennifer in the moonlight. So I prayed, “Hail Mary, full of Grace, thank you for the idea on how to meet Jennifer. And thank you that she came out to meet me. And please help me to see her more when I go back to school in England because I love her.”

I took fifty of the hundred lire Dad had given me and I bought a candle and lit it in front of Mary and crossed myself.

Chapter 32

MOM CAME INTO THE ROOM where I was getting dressed for supper and said, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you betray me?”

It hit me what she was talking about and it hit me too that in a way Rachael was worse than Janet because Rachael had a conscience. She was very good and pious and she was a tattletale.

“Mom, I’m sorry.”

“We were arguing about something else and it just slipped out.”

“How could you? What are you trying to do to me?”

“You’ve probably ruined my marriage.”

I saw she was really upset so I didn’t say anything about how I might have told, but it was her that had done the kissing.

“Will she tell Dad?”

“She says she won’t. I hope I can believe her. But you know Rachael.”

Again I thought things but didn’t say them. I thought how it was Mom who had given Rachael all those speeches about how your conscience was like a tender new plant and you had to care for it night and day and how you should always heed its still small voice and do what it said, which was like letting sunlight into a dark room so the tender little plant could grow. Well, Rachael’s conscience had grown all right, like the vine in “Jack and the Beanstalk.” And if Rachael heard or saw or even thought anything bad she told or admitted it and seemed to actually enjoy the punishment she got. Her conscience had had a lot of water and sunlight. It was so healthy it made Rachael a menace. If you could get some kind of weedkiller for consciences I would have poured it on Rachael’s head—or her chest, if consciences are in your heart. I’d probably have poured it on both places.