When we rowed back to our beach, I sat up on the front of one of the pontoons, and when the water got shallow enough to see to the bottom of the bay, I put on my mask and lay on the pontoon with my head in the water and watched the sandy bottom slide by underneath us. I saw a few fish way down where the water was turquoise green. They looked so far away I couldn’t tell how big they were. As we got closer to the shore, we went over a vivid patch of green seaweed, and I wondered if some sewer pipe came out there that I didn’t know about because we were still a lot further out than I usually snorkeled.

Jennifer hung on behind the boat and got pulled along in our gentle wake. Eunice sat with her head thrown back “to get a little more sun under my pale Surrey chin,” she said.

Mr. Bazlinton rowed very well since at Cambridge University he had been on the rowing team. Though, as he said, he had not rowed “tubs like this but the real thing.”

When we got to the beach the Banini waded in and pulled us up to where Eunice could step off the boat onto dry sand and not get her toes with their bright red polish wet. I thanked the Bazlintons for a great time, and Mr. Bazlinton said, “Jolly good, old chap, glad you enjoyed it.”

Then I took my mask and my towel and ran up the beach. Just as I got back to Mom at our deck chair, Jennifer called out “balloon,” and I could hear her laugh.

Chapter 13

IN THE MORNING IT WAS RAINING HARD. Not a summer storm where huge warm raindrops made craters in the sand and the sun came back out, but a pelting steady autumn rain. It was cold, and the sky was a solid battleship gray. The Banini didn’t even bother to come to work, and no one was on the beach except the German family who were dressed in rain slickers and were walking briskly from one end of the beach to the other and back again while their dad timed them with a stopwatch.

Lucrezia stared out the dining room window. She was polishing wineglasses. She did it without even needing to look at her hands and would just glance at each one against the light before she put it upside down on a tray.

I was eating breakfast alone at our table, hot chocolate and rolls to dip in it. I would butter the roll and when I dipped it in the hot chocolate, the butter would melt off so by the time the cup was half empty, the chocolate had a pool of melted butter floating on it.

Lucrezia saw me watching the Germans, and she tapped the side of her head to show how crazy she thought they were.