Dad and Mom hugged and kissed some more and came over and sat on the bed. Dad turned to us and said, “Never forget what has happened tonight.” He was speaking in his preaching voice. I knew / certainly wouldn’t forget. Then he said, “Your mother and I have both been behaving foolishly. I because I have not been paying proper attention to your mother and loving her the way Christ loves the Church, of which marriage is a picture. And your mother because she has done a foolish sinful thing. But I want you all to see that the love of Christ is bigger than us both.”

Mom turned to us and said, “Yes. Oh yes, Lord Jesus.”

Dad said, “We both beg you, our children’s forgiveness.” We mumbled that it was fine and got up to go. This time Dad let us leave and we all went to our rooms without saying anything to each other. It was sort of like a dream because it had ended so well. We all felt happy and like Rachael said the next day, it was like the second coming of Christ had happened and we had been raptured and met Him just as the Anti-Christ was closing in.

Chapter 33

THE LAST DAY IN PORTOFINO I went around to say good-bye, and see you next year, to all my vacation friends. The last day was always a sad day and now I was at a boarding school in England it was also a day when I started getting that sick, going-back-to-school feeling, in my stomach. It was the same feeling of hollow anxiety I had all year in school. After a while it got so I didn’t even notice it except when it got especially bad the day before tests or before punishments and at other times like when they served liver and Matron would make me sit at my place until I ate it all, even if it was hours later.

Once she served me the same piece of cold liver for two days running. At every meal it looked worse, especially at breakfast. At lunch on the second day I had finally eaten the whole thing without chewing any of it. After that I asked to be excused from the table and ran out to the toilets where I threw it all up.

Besides that sort of thing, there was the hard lump of homesickness in my chest which only got worse when letters and things arrived from home because I wasn’t there. Even though I hated being at home, compared to being in Italy, I hated boarding school even worse. I had gotten used to being years behind everyone else in my schoolwork and to lying about most things since I couldn’t do them the way I was supposed to. But I never got used to the last day of our summer vacation in Italy.