Dad, whose father ran away to sea at twelve and who fought in the Spanish-American War and worked on a coal breaker when he was eight where, Dad told me, you got hit with a stick by the foreman if you didn’t sort coal fast enough, came running back because he had heard the echo of the bus horn as the bus pulled out of the parking lot at Portofino.

“It’s coming!” he shouted.

The pensione door opened and Lucrezia came out carrying Mom’s little travel bag and calling out to Mom. Mom ran over to meet her and thanked her and told her we’d see her next year and to remember what she had learned about Jesus in church in our room. Lucrezia kissed Mom on both cheeks and waved to us all. Dad didn’t wave back because he was still mad at Mom.

The bus came and it was almost full with people going into Santa Margherita to work. We didn’t get any seats except Mom and Rachael who sat down up near the driver.

The train in Santa Margherita was eighteen minutes late, so Mom had been right about that. But Dad was right too in a way, because the train was so late we still might have missed our connection from Genoa to Milano. Even though this was nothing to do with Mom, Dad blamed her for it and said, “What else did you forget?” every time Mom talked about whether we’d make the express from Milano to Switzerland or just have to sit on the platform all night.

In Genoa the train we had wanted to get was gone already, so we were even later now. Dad said that we would miss the train to Switzerland for sure, that even in Italy the express trains were never a whole hour late.

Mom said, “Let’s pray about this.”

We all looked at Dad to see if he was so mad he’d dare to not join us in prayer, even though this would not be pleasing to the Lord. We found out he was seriously in a bad mood because he said, “You go ahead and pray, Elsa, I’m going to the newsstand to get a Newsweek.”