Carlotta returned a few minutes later, and the whole group set off for the ruins at Baia. These were in very shallow water, so there was a need to be careful even if the chilly grey weather was keeping most of the humans away. The top of the water was choppy in the wind, so they had to stay near the bottom to avoid being tossed around, but fortunately, there was plenty to see.
The one picture in Luca's travel book hadn't done the place justice. There were indeed statues of both marble and bronze, and wide stretches of the seafloor were covered in black and white mosaic with geometric patterns. In places there were even bits of walls and columns still standing, so it was possible to get an idea of how the buildings had been laid out.
"This must have been a fountain," said Luca, pointing to a pipe sticking up out of a square depression in the floor.
"And I think this was a garden," said Flavia, moving around an area with a dolphin statue and basin in the middle, surrounded by the trunks of long-dead trees. "Oh, look at this!"
The boys came to see what she'd found. It was a patch of mosaic with a picture in it, black on white. When they brushed the silt aside, they made out figures of a man with a flowing beard and scaly fins for legs, and a nude human woman arranged as if swimming around a depiction of the moon in the middle.
"I've seen pictures of mosaics like this in the Termi di Caracalla in Roma," said Luca. "The books say they're tritons and sea nymphs, which are both imaginary creatures that live in the water." He didn't say anything else, but he did look right at Alberto, and Alberto nodded. It was much more interesting to think that it was a human and a sea monster, like his parents.
Celia was perched not far away on a fallen piece of column with her eyes closed, her fists balled and her toes curled with effort. Alberto could guess what she was trying to do, but she still wasn't having any success at it. Eventually she opened her eyes and looked at her hands in her lap, then sighed with disappointment.
"It's okay, Guppy," said Carlotta.
"I know," Celia said, but she didn't believe it. She looked up at Alberto. "Will you show me again, please?"
"Of course," Alberto said, but he wasn't feeling very optimistic about it himself. He'd tried everything he could think of to teach her, but none of it had worked. Was she just not old enough? Or was he doing something wrong, that Celia couldn't get it? He held out his hands.
Celia swam up and took them, and he took a deep breath and transformed for a few seconds, until he couldn't hold it anymore.
"Okay," he said, changing back. "You try."
Celia gritted her teeth and squirmed with the effort, but nothing happened.
"Maybe you're trying too hard," Luca suggested.
"You gotta just do it," Alberto said. "Like this." Once again he breathed in and transformed, and squeezed Celia's hands, trying to will her to get it right.
And this time, it finally seemed to work. Celia's hands turned from turquoise to pink, and then the Change crept up her arms towards her shoulders. She saw it happening and gasped, pulling away from him to hold her hands up for inspection. This distracted her, though, and as with the first few times Alberto had attempted it himself, she lost her hold and changed back. Her face fell, disappointed.
Alberto, however, was thrilled. "You got it!" he told her. "Now, do it again!"
Celia took a deep breath of her own and focused. Nothing.
"Come on." He took her hand again. "Do it with me. Deep breath!"
She took one, and this time they Changed in unison, transforming into two human children suspended in the water. Alberto was actually a little jealous of how easy it seemed to be for her this time. He hadn't managed to do this properly until he'd had days of practice and had also been in a life-or-death situation. Celia seemed to have mastered it right away. With a grin on her face, she turned to her mother and tried to call out.
This was disastrous. She tried to breathe in the water, and immediately began to choke. Alberto let go of her as both changed back into sea monsters. Carlotta dashed over to take her daughter in her arms, and Celia sputtered a bit before managing to get several deep gulps of water through her gills.
"You did wonderfully, Guppy," said Carlotta, patting Celia's back as she continued to pant. "Maybe take a bit of a rest now."
Luca was frowning. "I dunno if it was Celia who was doing that," he said. "I think it was Alberto."
"What?" Alberto frowned. "It was Celia who Changed." But... hadn't he been trying his own hardest to make it happen, just as he'd done when he'd learned to control his own transformations?
"Yeah, but only while you were touching her," Luca said. "When you let go, she Changed back. Here, try me." He offered a hand.
Alberto took it. Bu surely, he thought, there was no way... even if somehow it had been Alberto's doing, maybe it only worked on Celia because she was also half-human. Anyway, Alberto touched people all the time. Surely if he could control other people's changes as well, he'd have known by now...
... then again, he'd been thirteen before he realized he could even control his own, and he'd certainly never tried to make anyone else Change before now. He squeezed Luca's fingers and tried to command it to happen, just as he'd done for Celia.
Impossibly, it started to work. The Change crept up Luca's arm in unison with Alberto's. They both stared at it for a few moments, and then Alberto very carefully let go, while focused on keeping his own hand and arm looking human. It obeyed him – while Luca Changed back right away.
"Wow!" Luca whispered, and then turned to the others. "You think it'll work on Flavia?"
Flavia gasped, and Uncle Giorgio put a protective arm around her.
"You don't have to let him if you don't want to," Uncle Giorgio said quickly, and shot Alberto and Luca such a ferocious glare that they involuntarily backed away from him. For a moment Alberto didn't understand why he was angry. They hadn't done anything wrong. Then he remembered Carlotta talking about how when she was a child, people had suggested all kinds of things to 'cure' her vitiligne. Flavia had probably heard a bunch of similar advice, and like Carlotta, found that none of it worked.
But Flavia herself moved cautiously forward and stretched out a hand. Alberto took it, and concentrated on transforming both himself and her – but unlike with Luca, this time he Changed, and she didn't. After waiting as long as he could hold his breath, just to be sure, he let it out and let go. Flavia sighed, defeated, but then shrugged.
"I figure it probably wouldn't," she said softly.
"Maybe it only works when you can already do the Change," Luca speculated.
Uncle Giorgio put his hands on Flavia's shoulders, and continued to scowl at the boys. Alberto felt he'd better lighten the mood somehow.
"Too bad," he said. "I was hoping it would work on humans. Can you imagine Ercole's face if I grabbed him and he turned into a sea monster?"
That was at least enough to make Luca giggle, and then his face lit up – he'd just had an idea. "Flavia!" he said. "You should come and visit us in Portorosso!"
Flavia looked shocked by this suggestion, and Uncle Giorgio absolutely horrified. He opened his mouth as if to start scolding them for saying such awful things, but Alberto cut him off.
"He's right, you should!" he said.
"A lot of people there never bother to get out of the water at all," Luca said. "My parents only ever tried it last year. So they won't care if you can't Change, and they won't have any reason to be mean to you."
"And if you do want to go on land, the humans there aren't scared of sea monsters!" Alberto added. "They just think of us as their neighbours. So we'll just tell them Flavia doesn't Change and they'll be fine with it. The human kids will probably think you're neat."
Flavia looked hopeful for a split second, but it didn't last. "I can't stay out very long, though," she said. "I have to keep my gills wet. Nonna Sofia puts a damp towel around my neck."
"Then we can do that, too," said Alberto. "I promise, nobody there is going to be mean to you – except maybe Ercole, but he's mean to everybody so we just all ignore him. My cousin on the human side, Giulia, she'll love you!"
Luca nodded hard. Giulia would definitely want to be friends with Flavia.
"I, um..." Flavia looked down, fiddling with the edge of her tunic – there was a frayed spot where she apparently did this regularly. "I don't know. I've never been away from the bay..."
"You don't have to if you don't want to," Uncle Giorgio repeated firmly. He shot the boys another disapproving look.
Alberto glared back at him. He had no right to be angry with them – Alberto and Luca were trying to help. People in Portorosso would be fine with Flavia once they knew what her problem was. Flavia herself, and her fathers, just needed some persuasion.
"Don't play with that, you'll unweave it," Uncle Giorgio told his daughter.
"Sorry, Papa Giorgio," she said, letting go of it.
"Your Dad is right," Luca said. "You don't have to, but we're sure you'll like it. Just think about it, okay?"
Flavia nodded, but didn't reply.
Eventually the sun started to come out again, and the risk that somebody on shore would spot them became too great. The group ceased exploring the ruins and got back together to head for deeper water. Flavia had cheered up a little by then, and showed the boys something she'd found – a little clay object shaped like a dove, with barnacles on its head that made it look like it had huge cartoon eyes.
"That's a lamp!" said Luca. "There aren't any jellyfish on land or anything else that glows in the dark, so when they need light, humans used to fill these with oil and set it on fire. They don't do that anymore, though," he added, happy as always to talk about the things he'd learned in school. "Now they make lights out of a little wire in a glass bulb, which gets really hot and glows when they run a special kind of lightning through it."
"I've seen those at Nonna Sofia's house," Flavia said with a nod. "She's told me they're hot, but I didn't know they had lightning in them!"
"At school we did an experiment where we used a potato to make one light up," Luca told her. "You need pins made of special metals to get it out, but potatoes have lighting in them!" He looked at Alberto. "Do you think your Nonna would let us show her?"
"She might," said Alberto. He remembered Luca's letter from school about the experiment and its exciting results. "We should ask."
They arrived back at Flavia's house to find Uncle Leonardo there waiting for them. He greeted Flavia and Giorgio with hugs and kisses, and let Flavia collect her lumpfish and stick them to her arms and legs.
"Did you have fun at Baia?" Uncle Leonardo asked.
"Yes. Look what I found." Flavia showed him the dove lamp. "Luca says it's what humans did before they had light bulbs like Nonna's."
"He's right," said Uncle Leonardo. "That's a lovely little find. Maybe we can go back there on the next rainy day, when there won't be any humans."
There was a long pause then, before Flavia spoke again. "Papa Leo," she said, "Alberto and Luca asked if we want to go visit them in Portorosso. They said the sea monsters there won't be mean to me and the humans won't be scared of me."
Uncle Leonardo cocked his head, then looked at his partner – Uncle Giorgio nodded, confirming that was what the boys had said.
"I don't know if we should take the word of two thirteen-year-olds for that," Giorgio cautioned.
"I'm fourteen," said Alberto.
"Angelfish?" Uncle Leonardo said to Flavia. "What do you think?"
"I dunno," said Flavia.
Uncle Leonardo nodded. "That's okay."
"I think..." Uncle Giorgio began, but Leonardo held up a hand to tell him not now. Alberto scowled – Uncle Giorgio didn't like him. He wasn't going to let Flavia go to Portorosso, even if she decided she wanted to.
"We'll all think about it," said Uncle Leonardo. "Thanks for your help, Signora Gennari," he added, to Carlotta. "Flavia loved meeting your sharks the other day."
"They're lovely creatures," Carlotta agreed with a beaming smile. "Flavia, you're welcome to join us any time. Maybe you could even stop by tonight, after dark. We've got a bit of a surprise planned, as long as the weather cooperates."
"Thank you," said Flavia quietly.
"Oh," Uncle Leonardo said, "I need to stop by Ma's house, and she asked if I could tell you she'd like to speak to Alberto. It's not urgent," he added.
"That's fine," Carlotta said. "We'll go with you and stop on the way."
"See you round, Flavia!" said Luca cheerfully.
Flavia gave a half-hearted wave goodbye, while petting one of her lumpfish.
Alberto was disappointed as they took their leave. He'd hoped Flavia would have forgiven them by now, but she hadn't said anything about it. Maybe they were meant to assume it was okay now? In Alberto's experience, making assumptions about whether people were angry or not never worked out well. If she was no longer mad at them, he would much rather she just say so.
Luca seemed to feel the same way. "Do you think she's still mad at us?" he whispered, as they followed Carlotta, Celia, and Uncle Leonardo over the meadows of seagrass.
"I can't tell," said Alberto.
"Maybe she just needs more time," Luca said.
"Maybe," said Alberto, but he didn't feel optimistic. He really wanted to have at least one friend among his cousins. He'd come here determined that everybody was going to like him. Now he was willing to settle for anybody.
It seemed that Alberto and Luca weren't the only ones Nonna Sofia had asked to stop by. When they entered her kitchen, the table was surrounded by younger children playing a board game, while Nonna Sofia herself passed out bottles of fruit-flavoured soda. Celia called out to Sofia and ran to hug her, then whispered something in her ear. Nonna Sofia nodded indulgently and gave the little girl a kiss on the cheek, then gestured for Luca and Alberto to join her.
"Come on upstairs," she said.
Alberto swallowed hard, and followed her up. "Ho's Giancarlo?" he asked.
Nonna Sofia looked back over her shoulder sharply, and Alberto realized she probably hadn't yet heard him refer to his father by name. She didn't say anything about it, though. "He's fine. He doesn't want to leave the island, so I got him settled there. He's rather upset that Flavia told you, and more so that you told me, but I persuaded him not to do anything about it. I want to reassure you two that we're going to look after him. We're his family."
"Yeah." Alberto nodded.
Nonna Sofia paused outside a bedroom, and turned to Luca. "May Alberto and I have a moment, please?" she asked.
"Yes, Ma'am," said Luca. He gave Alberto a sympathetic look, and went back downstairs to wait.
Nonna Sofia ushered Alberto into the bedroom. He wondered for a moment if this were the room where his father had been staying, but it was far too tidy for that. With the bed made, the cushions carefully arranged, and the knick-knacks on the tables and shelves, it looked like nobody had slept in that room in months.
"Alberto," Nonna Sofia said, "I know you're not having the best time here, and I knew that even before you tried to run away. I want you to know I'm very glad you've stayed, and I'm proud of you for trying to do the right thing."
"Thanks," Alberto replied awkwardly, looking at his feet. He remembered last fall, when he'd been so desperate, after their little trip together, to make Massimo proud of him. Alberto hadn't realized at the time that Massimo was used to Giulia, who understood when he was proud without needing to be told. Alberto needed to hear it, and Massimo was trying to make the effort of telling him, but that was leading to a new problem – Alberto didn't feel like he deserved to have people proud of him. When he did hear it, he didn't know how to respond.
"Your father would like to speak to you again," Nonna Sofia added, "but I've told him that's only allowed if you want to."
He probably wanted to shout at Alberto for snitching on him. If he were upset that Alberto had told Nonna Sofia, that would be nothing compared to how furious he must be that they'd told the Rossi brothers and Polly. "No, thank you," he said firmly.
"I'll let him know," said Nonna Sofia, and did not press the matter.
She took Alberto back downstairs, where Luca was waiting along with Alberto's younger cousins. Most of the children were still interested in their game, but Andrea was, as usual, full of questions.
"I try to read," he was insisting. "It's too hard. I like it better when Mom or Dad read to me." "You need more practice," Luca said.
"I try," Andrea repeated. "I can't do it. The letters all look the same. I can't tell which is p and which is b and d and all the rest. They all sound the same, too, when you say their names. I don't understand how anybody can do it."
Alberto rolled his eyes. Reading was hard, but he was getting better at it. Surely Andrea could, too – but the boy's description of his difficulties seemed to mean something to Luca that hadn't occurred to anyone else.
"There was a girl in my class who had trouble like that!" he said. "The teacher called it dislessia. She needed special lessons, and she had trouble with math, too."
Andrea's twin sister, Emilia, had been listening in, and now she spoke up. "I don't have any problem with it," she declared. "Andrea's just lazy."
"I am not!" her brother protested.
"You are so! You don't wanna do chores, either. You get distracted!" "Children, children," said Nonna Sofia, coming to quiet them. "We're not here to argue. Luca, you say this friend of yours at school has a... a disease of some sort?" "Sort of,"s aid Luca. "I don't know how it works, but she needs special help. She's normal other than that." "I'll have a word with Girolino and Bettina," Nonna Sofia decided. Behind her back, Andrea and Emilia were kicking each other under the table. "You two, cut that out, or I'll have to send you outside," she threatened, without turning around.
Andrea stuck his tongue out at his sister. "Nonna's got eyes in the back of her head," he told Luca. "She says she doesn't, but she can see what we're doing even when she's not in the room."
"That's not eyes, that's Nonna's Intuition," Sofia told him. "Carlotta, dear, thank you for bringing them by."
Carlotta had been leaning to watch as one of the smaller children showed Celia a colouring book. "Was that all?" she asked in surprise, looking up.
"Yes, I just wanted a brief word with Alberto, to tell him some things I think he needed to hear." Nonna Sofia nodded at him. "Now I'm afraid I have a family to wrangle."
That was right, Alberto realized – if the children were here, the adults must be somewhere nearby. He went to the doorway to look into the living room, and found it full to bursting. Aunt Diana didn't seem to be there, but Uncle Umberto was – Alberto recognized him from having seen him the day he'd brought his sons to have Nonna Sofia's cookies. He recognized Uncle Leonardo, too, and Lucrezia, and there were two couples that must have been Uncle Girolamo and Uncle Guglielmo, and the Aunts Bettina. Several of them looked disapprovingly in Alberto's direction before returning their attention to Nonna Sofia as she stepped past him into the room.
This was some kind of family meeting, and Alberto wasn't welcome at it. He told himself that was just as well as he went to rejoin Carlotta and Celia. They were probably talking about how to deal with Giancarlo. That was a grownup problem, and Alberto didn't need to worry about it anymore.
Celia was very tired, and by the time they were halfway back to the house at Bacoli, Carlotta was carrying her. Alberto was also yawning – it had been an extremely long day, from their aborted trip to Portici, to finding Gianarlo, to Baia with Flavia, and he didn't know how to feel about any of it. All he was sure of was that he was very, very tired.
He continued to yawn and nod at dinner that night, and was happy to go to bed early. He woke up around midnight, though, when Mike came into the room to gently shake the two boys.
"Hey," he said, "sorry to wake you, but I think you'll enjoy this. The sky's cleared up, and you can see Giove and Saturno."
Alberto was still blinking in the darkness, but Luca was suddenly wide awake. "Really?" he asked. "Do you have a telescope? Can you see the moons and rings?"
"Only a pair of binoculars, but they're pretty good. Come on outside," said Mike. "Carlotta's made you some ciocolatta."
Luca rolled over and shook Alberto's shoulder. "Come on!" he said. "I'll show you the stuff we've been seeing at school!" He threw the blankets off himself and ran to get his shoes on.
Alberto was still half-asleep, but he couldn't say no when Luca was so excited. Out on the beach, Carlotta had set up a few chairs and a little table with the hot chocolate. Alberto went right to this, but Luca showed no interest in it whatsoever. Instead he ran down onto the sand, and pointed out what appeared to be the two brightest stars in the sky.
"There they are! The brighter one is Giove – it's the biggest planet. It's got a storm on it that's so huge, it could swallow the entire Earth! It's my favourite because if you've got a telescope you can watch the moons go around. There's four you can see, but there's eight more that you can't unless you have a really big telescope. Saturno's got a bunch of moons, too, but there's only one that's really easy to see." He continued to chatter as Mike got the settled in the beach chairs, and handed Alberto the pair of binoculars.
It was hard to hold them still enough to see anything, but when he managed it, Alberto could see four bright dots arranged around the bigger circle of planet Giove, just as Luca had described. The rings of Saturno were harder to see, and Luca told him that was because they were close to facing the earth edge-on – they were much easier to see when they were at more of an angle, which happened because Saturno wobbled like a top as it circled the sun.
Alberto didn't exactly understand any of this, but it made him think about that evening when Giulia had given Luca her astronomy textbook and he'd spent the whole walk to the Vespa dealership nattering on about the things she'd told him and what he'd seen through Old Man Bernardi's telescope. At the time Alberto hadn't really listened. He'd been too scared of Luca deciding he liked Giulia better and abandoning Alberto, like everybody else in his life had so far. But this feeling of seeing something so distant and so incomprehensible but knowing it was real and wonderful... this must be what Luca had been feeling that night. No wonder he hadn't wanted to shut up.
"Alberto!" Luca tugged on his pajama sleeve. "Look! Flavia's here!"
Alberto lowered the binoculars, startled, and then grinned as he saw Uncle Leonardo and Uncle Giorgio walking out of the water, with Flavia between them. She had a wet towel hung around her neck, and was keeping her eyes on the ground as they approached. Was she afraid something bad was going to happen? But no, when they got a little closer, Alberto realized she was just trying to hide the fact that she was, herself, in the middle of a yawn.
"Hi, Flavia!" Luca waved.
"Yeah, hi!" said Alberto. He held out the binoculars. "You want to look?"
Flavia looked up at her fathers as they transformed, seeking permission. Uncle Leonardo urged her forward, and Alberto got up to give her the binoculars.
"Here," he said.
"You hold them up to your eyes, and they make things look bigger," Luca explained.
Flavia took the device as if afraid it would explode in her hands, but let Alberto show her how to hold them while Luca pointed out where the planets were in the sky. Alberto knew the moment she spotted them, because she gasped and nearly let go of the binoculars. For a moment she lifted her head from them to check that these were the same objects as the bright points in the sky – then she raised the instrument again so she could see the details, all while Luca chattered about moons, rings, and storms.
"Are there oceans there?" she asked.
"Nobody knows," said Luca. "Maybe."
Carlotta approached with a cup. "Here, Flavia," she said kindly, "have some cioccolata ."
" Grazie ," said Flavia. She gave the binoculars to Luca and accepted the treat, and Carlotta offered her a chair to sit in. Flavia perched on the edge of it, curling her tail around so it would hang to the side. She dug her toes into the sand and sipped at the chocolate carefully, then hummed a bit. "It's almost as good as Nonna Sofia's," she said.
Carlotta grinned. "That's a compliment, indeed!"
"Some humans believe there are special stars that determine your future," said Luca. "When's your birthday?"
"June the sixteenth," she replied, then seemed to rethink that. "I mean, we don't actually know my birthday, but we say I was one year old on June sixteen, because that's the day Papa Leo and Papa Giorgio adopted me."
"Right, then you're a Gemelli ," said Luca. "It's not visible right now, because the idea is that the sun is passing through it..."
"The sun's only up in the day, though," Flavia protested. "It can't pass through stars."
"The stars are still there during the day, we just can't see them because the sun is so much brighter," Luca explained. "We know where they are, though, because they stay in the same spot, while planets moved around. I'm a Scorpione , which is..." he looked around. "Right there! See that bright red star there? It's called Antares . That's Greek, and it means 'the rival of Marte', because the planet Marte is also red and about as bright."
"You learned all this in school?" asked Alberto. He'd had no idea the stars had names.
"Some of it," said Luca. "I learned the rest of it from books. There are so many things to know."
"You're so lucky," Flavia said mournfully.
"Yeah, I know," said Luca. "I mean, I'm lucky my parents let me go to school at all, because I didn't think they would. And I'm lucky I met Giulia and Alberto, because I never would have been able to go without them, and I'm lucky Giulia's mom was willing to let me stay with them. Now I know I'm also lucky I can do the Change. I never thought about that before. I'll appreciate it more from now on," he promised.
"Yeah, me, too," Alberto agreed. He couldn't imagine what his life would have been like if he couldn't transform. Even as a kid, Alberto had spent most of his time out of the water. He liked swimming, but land was where all the cool stuff was. Being able to control the Change like nobody else could was neat and had sometimes been useful... but he wasn't sure what he thought about this new facet of the ability, where he could make other people transform. That seemed like something it would be very easy to do bad things with. If it could have helped Flavia, that would have been one thing, but since it didn't, maybe he'd just leave it alone.
Luca was yawning, but he sat up straight and shook his head, trying to force himself to stay awake. Flavia giggled looking at him, and then she yawned, too. Alberto tried his hardest not to do the same, but yawning was contagious, and he couldn't stop.
"I think maybe we all need to go back to bed," Carlotta said. "This was lovely, though, wasn't it?"
"It was," said Uncle Leonardo, and shook her hand. "We really appreciate it. Flavia rarely gets to just spend time with friends."
Alberto sat up. "Hey," he said, through another yawn. "Flavia, Nonna Sofia says you like to cook with her."
"Sometimes," Flavia said cautiously.
"Why don't we all go to her house tomorrow, and we can do that?" Alberto suggested. His first attempts to cook with Massimo had been very messy, but he was getting better at it and he liked doing it – and even if he hadn't, it was important to do the things your friends wanted as well as what you wanted. That was one of the things he'd learned from Luca.
Flavia looked hesitant. "I don't know," she said. "What if some of the other cousins are there?"
Alberto immediately knew just who she meant by 'other cousins'. "Then we'll tell them to get stuffed, like Giancarlo did," he said firmly.
"You'll be less rude about it, I hope," said Uncle Giorgio.
"It sounds like a lovely idea," said Carlotta. "I'll call Sofia in the morning and see if she's available for it, and if she is, we'll stop by to pick up Flavia on the way. She'll let us know, I'm sure, if we can expect anybody else."
"Wonderful," agreed Uncle Leonardo. "What do you think, Angelfish?"
"Okay!" said Flavia, with a proper smile now – which almost immediately melted into another yawn. "Sorry. We don't usually get up in the middle of the night."
"Neither do we," Luca told her.
Flavia stood up and gave her empty cup back to Carlotta, then back back and hugged both boys. Alberto stiffened in surprise and felt Luca do the same, but then both were happy to hug her back.
"I'm not mad at you anymore," Flavia whispered.
"That's great!" said Alberto.
"Yeah, thank you," Luca agreed. "We're glad."
Flavia waved goodbye as her fathers escorted her back into the sea. Once they were gone, Mike and Carlotta brought the chairs inside and shooed the boys back up to bed. Alberto had managed to wake up for the duration of their stargazing session, but now that was over, he was doubly exhausted. Even so, he felt pretty good as he and Luca settled back down in bed. After so many disasters, he finally had some relatives who liked him, and by visiting Baia they'd gotten to do at least one of the things listed in Luca's book. The adults were looking after the big problems with Giancarlo and the thieves, and things finally seemed to be going right .