Their first stop was at the sunken boat, to drop Flavia off. Uncle Giorgio was out looking for her, but Uncle Leonardo was home, and he dashed over to give her a hug.

"Where have you been?" he asked, giving his daughter a gentle shake. "We've been going nuts! Your Papa Giorgio was sure you got eaten by an orca!"

"I'm fine!" Flavia said. "I was with Alberto and Luca and Celia, and Zio Bruno! They took me to get gelato, and frittatine di pasta."

"What?" asked Leonardo. "On the surface?" he was horrified.

"Nobody saw me," Flavia promised. "I wore a big hat and we stayed out of crowds."

"There was one guy," Alberto admitted. "But he thought he was dreaming."

"I got to try two types of gelato!" Flavia added. "I tried the cioccolata, but it wasn't sweet like the stuff Signora Gennari made for me. So Alberto gave me lampone instead and that was much better."

Leonardo began to relax a little. "I'm glad there was a grownup there," he said.

"I think I do wanna go to Portorosso and visit Alberto there," Flavia added. "Can we please?"

"We'll see what your Papa Giorgio says," Leonardo told her, hugging her again.

"Either way," Nonna Sofia said, patting Celia's back as she slept, "one thing we definitely can do is try to salvage our cookie baking day! Tomorrow morning let's feed Carlotta's sharks, and then we can get together and try again."

Flavia looked excited for a moment, but then her face fell. "Will Lucrezia be there?" she asked.

"Don't worry," Alberto told her. "I know how to deal with Lucrezia."

Nonna Sofia cocked her head. "I don't think I like the sound of that," she said. "You're not going to hurt anyone, are you?"

"Nah," said Alberto. "I'm just gonna scare her a little."

"Hmm." Nonna Sofia still looked like she disapproved, but she said nothing more about it. Instead, she said goodnight to Uncle Leonardo and Flavia, and then escorted the boys and Celia back to the Gennaris' house in Bacoli.

They arrived to find Mike and Carlotta both sitting out on the beach chairs, but neither were relaxed – both were right on the edges, watching the sea as they waited anxiously. As soon as she saw them, Carlotta came running to take Celia from Nonna Sofia's arms. Without even waiting for her to wake up, she began covering her in kisses.

"Mamma?" Celia asked sleepily.

"Sorry, Guppy," said Carlotta, hugging her tight. "I'm just happy to see you."

"I gotta show you something," said Celia.

"Tomorrow, Piccola," Carlotta said, as Mike came to join in the family hug. "Right now, you need to go to bed." She gave Celia one more kiss on the cheek, then handed her to her father and asked Nonna Sofia, "what's been going on? The radio said there was a robbery in Portici. That's where Alberto's father works." Her eyes flicked to Giancarlo, waiting a few metres further out.

"Yes, we'll tell you about it in the morning," Nonna Sofia replied. "For now, the children need their sleep, and frankly so do I."

Mike rearranged Celia in his arms and gestured to the boys. "Your grandmother's right," he said. "It sounds like you had a pretty exciting day."

"Way too exciting," Luca said through a yawn of his own.

Alberto woke up in the morning before the alarm the Gennaris had set for him, but did not get up. Instead, he just lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling. It didn't seem possible that all those things had really happened yesterday... that he'd tried to steal some diamonds and almost been found out by the police and everything else. Had it just been a dream? It felt awfully real...

He got his answer a minute later, when Celia came bouncing into the room to wake them up. "Buongiorno!" she called out, scrambling up onto the bed. "Papà's brought sfogliatelle! Come on, wake up!"

Alberto closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, just to tease her. He got a surprise, however, when two sets of cold claws touched his cheeks.

"Fish hands!" Celia declared.

Alberto sat up in startlement, and Celia giggled madly, holding up her transformed arms. She let them turn back into human hands, and grabbed Alberto's arm to pull him out of bed. "Come on! We're going to feed the sharks with Flavia and then we can try making cookies with Zia Sofia again!"

"Yeah, I remember," said Alberto, yawning. "Gimme a minute, I'm coming."

Celia transformed her hands again, and did Luca next. "Fish hands! Fish hands!" she giggled.

Luca rubbed his eyes. "What's fish hands?" he asked.

"Yeah, how long has that been a thing?" Alberto wanted to know.

"Since this morning! Mamma told me she used to dip her hands in water and put cold Fish Hands on Papa from behind!" Celia grinned. "I don't even need the water now!"

"Oh, your Dad better look out," said Luca.

The boys washed up and got dressed. When they got downstairs, they found that there was company for breakfast. As well as Mike and Carlotta, Nonna Sofia was there waiting for them, and Carlotta's mother Margherita. Celia ran to climb into her grandmother's lap and kiss her cheek.

"Buongiorno, Nonna Rita!" she said happily.

"Good morning, Starfish!" said Signora Merluzzo. "Aren't you chipper today?"

Celia beamed. "Look what Alberto taught me!" she said, and held up her hands to transform.

"Che splendido!" Signora Merluzzo exclaimed. "Aren't you talented?"

Celia changed back. "I can't do it for long yet, but I'm gonna practice," she promised.

"I can hang onto it long enough to swim all the way out to the buoy in Portorosso Bay and back," Alberto said. "I'm gonna do the race all by myself this year." That was bragging, which he'd promised himself he wouldn't do... but he didn't care anymore. He was proud of that, and he wanted people to know it.

After eating the pastries Mike had brought home, the entire group headed out to the shipwreck where Carlotta fed her sharks. Uncle Leonardo, Uncle Giorgio, and Flavia were waiting for them there. Carlotta gave Flavia the bag of chum, and as the sharks smelled it they began to emerge from their hiding places.

"This is how I met Celia's father," Carlotta told Flavia. "He was interested in the sharks and he was particularly curious about how they have babies. He was upsetting them awfully, so I tried to drive him off but he wasn't scared of me. Somehow, instead of getting rid of him, I ended up helping him make friends with them."

"Really? Why wasn't he scared?" asked Flavia.

"He said nothing as pretty as me could possibly hurt him," Carlotta said with an embarrassed laugh.

While they talked, Uncle Giorgio came and took Alberto aside. "I need to talk to you," he said.

That was a bad phrase. I need to talk to you always meant trouble, whether it came from Signora Marsigliese, from the priest, or even from Uncle Massimo. Alberto swallowed. "Yeah?" he asked.

Giorgio led him a little bit apart from the others, then asked, "how many humans are there in Portorosso?"

"I don't know," said Alberto. "Not very many. Not nearly as many as it somewhere like Genova or Napoli." He thought for a few moments. "Maybe... a few hundred?"

"Is that all?" Uncle Giorgio asked, as if it were more normal for humans to live in big crowded places rather than little ones. Alberto had never thought about that... surely most places were more like Portorosso than Napoli, weren't they? "And all of them are okay with sea monsters?"

Alberto hesitated again. Bragging might be all right, as long as he only did a little bit of it, but lying was something else, especially lying about something so important. "Most of them are," he said. "There are a few who don't like us much. The Visconti family thinks we're weird and the priest says we're heathens, but everybody else is pretty friendly. Signorina Repetto at the Farmacia says we have to be polite to our neighbours. Anyway, everybody knows if they're mean to us, they'll have to deal with Uncle Massimo!"

"I see," said Uncle Giorgio. "And where do the sea monsters actually live? It's not... in the town, is it?"

"Oh, no, that's just me, and the two Signore Aragosta," Alberto said. "They've been there for like forty years because of some argument with their families. Everybody else lives in normal sea monster houses out in the bay."

"And have they seen you in the water?" Uncle Giorgio continued. "I mean, they don't think you're just humans, and they don't ignore that other part of you, right?"

"Right," said Alberto. "I'm telling you, it's okay! In the summers I'm the lifeguard when the human kids go swimming so everybody sees me all the time. They'll probably think it's cool that she doesn't Change. Even if nobody else does, I know my cousin Giulia will."

"How old is your cousin?" was the next question.

"Thirteen. Same age as Luca."

Uncle Giorgio nodded slowly. "It would be good for Flavia to have girl friends around her age," he said.

"Then it's settled. Obviously you should come and visit!" Alberto said. "I'll let everybody know she's coming, and we can figure out how to keep her gills wet." There were lots of fontanelle where they could leave extra towels for her. Maybe they could show a movie in the church, as they sometimes did on weeknights... she'd like that. Maybe she could even learn to ride a bicycle!

"I'll talk to Leo about it," said Uncle Giorgio. He was still a little skeptical, but he sounded like he was breaking down. Alberto considered that a good sign.

Once all the sharks were fed and had slipped away into the shadowy water once more, they headed for Nonna Sofia's. It wasn't until they were at the bottom of the steps that Alberto suddenly remembered something else... something that made him want to stop right there.

Luca paused halfway in and halfway out of the water, and looked back at him. "What's the matter?" he asked.

For a moment Alberto didn't want to say anything, for fear of getting a lecture about how he was part of this family and shouldn't be ashamed. Then he looked at the worried faces of the adults who had stopped on the steps above Luca – Carlotta and Nonna Sofia, Uncle Giorgio and Uncle Leonardo – and told himself it wasn't like that. They weren't worried he would say something they wouldn't approve of. They like Luca was, or like Massimo would be, were worried about whether he was feeling okay.

"My father's not going to be here, is he?" he asked. Nonna Sofia had given him a second chance to live there.

"Heavens, no!" said Nonna Sofia. "He's gone with his friend to the shipyards, to inquire about getting work there. He's hoping they'll hire him as a delivery man or a message runner. He thinks he'll like that better than actually building ships, like Bruno does."

Alberto breathed out, and followed the others up the stone steps.

Giancarlo was not at Nonna Sofia's house, but some surprising other people were. Uncle Umberto was there, as well as Uncle Girolino and one of the Aunts Bettina with their kids, and they all crowded around to see as Alberto entered the living room.

"Here's the hero of the day!" said Uncle Umberto with a grin.

Alberto stopped short and stared, as surprised as if the man had just insulted him. In fact, he would probably have been less shocked by an insult. Insults were kind of expected. This was completely out of nowhere. He could only stand stone-still while Uncle Umberto came up and gave him a hug.

"Diana would have come herself, but she doesn't want to leave the egg," Uncle Umberto said, holding Alberto at arm's length to smile at him. "She wanted me to tell you how proud she is of you!"

"She is?" asked Alberto, still flummoxed.

"Yes! Your father said you kept us from being exposed in front of all of Portici and the police, all by yourself, and saved Sofia's life!"

Alberto looked around the room in astonishment, but the other relatives were nodding – except for Lucrezia, who was rolling her eyes. He didn't know what to think. After all those disasters, after he'd stopped trying and stopped caring... now they'd decided they liked him after all?

Then he realized his father had lied. Alberto needed to correct him, or he would be lying, too. "It wasn't just me. Everybody else helped, Luca and Celia and Flavia and Uncle Bruno. I couldn't have done it without them."

Luca smiled sheepishly, and Flavia stepped to the side as if to hide behind Alberto. Celia, however, waved excitedly, with a big smile on her face. Nonna Sofia nodded, pleased by Alberto's honesty.

"That's very big of you to say, Alberto," said Uncle Girolamo. "It would have been easy to take all the credit."

"Oh, yes," said Lucrezia. "Up on land, I'm sure Flavia was really useful."

Flavia shrank back further, while Lucrezia's younger siblings snickered.

Nonna Sofia shook her head. "Really, Lucrezia," she said reproachfully. "Everybody else is trying to have a family celebration."

"Flavia's not family," Lucrezia sniffed

Alberto squared his shoulders and marched up to Lucrezia. "Actually," he said, "she was a lot of help."

"Oh, was she?" Lucrezia sneered. "I bet she didn't do anything to keep the police from finding out about sea monsters!"

"Maybe you'd like to show them, then!" Alberto grabbed Lucrezia's wrist and focused. He wasn't sure he could make somebody else transform without also doing it to himself – it turned out he couldn't, but he managed to keep his own Change to the one hand, while transforming Lucrezia fully. The fins grew in where her dark curls had been, her skin rippled as it turned to silvery-blue scales, and her stockings tore as her feet became clawed flippers.

Lucrezia stared in horror for a moment, then looked around the room at all the other people watching this. Luca was smiling, while Flavia was laughing out loud. Uncle Girolino and Aunt Bettina were horrified, but Nonna Sofia was trying very hard to hide a smirk. Alberto grinned like a shark – Lucrezia didn't know it would only last as long as he was touching her, did she?

"Change me back!" Lucrezia ordered.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because you can't do this to me!"

"Sure I can," Alberto said. "Maybe I'll change you back... if you apologize to Flavia."

Lucrezia blinked, then groaned. "Okay, fine. I'm sorry."

"Nah, you have to mean it," said Alberto. Celia ran up and grabbed Lucrezia's other hand, and the two of them pulled her towards Flavia. "Go ahead," Alberto added.

"I'm sorry," Lucrezia repeated.

"You still don't mean it," said Alberto. "I think we'll just leave you, huh, Celia?"

"Yeah!" said Celia nastily.

"I'm sorry!" Lucrezia wailed. "I'm so sorry! I'll never do it again!"

"What will you never do again?" asked Alberto.

Lucrezia looked pleadingly at Flavia. "I'll never... I'll never tell you you're not a real Scorfano. I promise. I swear. If Nonna Sofia says you're a Scorfano, you're a Scorfano. Cross my heart."

"What else?" Alberto prompted.

Lucrezia looked like she was being asked to stap herself. Her face contorted in misery. "I'll never make fun of you again," she said, then turned to Alberto in desperation. "My gills are starting to itch! They're gonna dry out and I won't be able to breathe."

"Maybe Flavia will give you her towel," said Alberto.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Lucrezia insisted, tears rising in her eyes. "Please. I'll never say another word to Flavia as long as I live!"

Alberto relented. He let her change back first, before he let go, in the hope that she wouldn't make the connection. "Celia can do that, too," he told her, "just so you know. So don't think you can be awful to Flavia just because I'm in Portorosso."

Lucrezia turned to look at Celia. "She can? But..."

Celia transformed, beaming. "See?" she said, and spun around to show everyone. Her tail flew in a circle trailing after her, and Lucrezia had to step back so as not to get slapped by it.

"I've been telling everybody for ages not to spread those horrible rumours about Carlotta," said Nonna Sofia stiffly. "I'm glad those can finally be put to rest! Clearly Celia is half-human just like Alberto, if she can do what he can."

Alberto stood up straighter.

Lucrezia looked at her hands, felt her hair, and checked her backside, then scurried across the room to return to her parents. Aunt Bettina put out her arms and pulled her daughter into a hug, her face stony. Alberto was pretty sure she would never forgive him, but he didn't care a bit. The other cousins were smiling. Even Uncle Girolino was having trouble hiding it.

"Forget her," Alberto said to Flavia. "We gotta finish those gingerbread men."

"Or we could show you the potato battery!" Luca offered. "Remember I told you there's lightning in potatoes?"

Andrea brightened. "I wanna see the potato battery!" he said.

"Yeah!" said Flavia. "Let's do both!"

"We eat potatoes," Alberto pointed out. "Are we eating lightning?" That seemed like something he would have been able to feel, like the time he'd tried to get a piece of stuck bread out of the toaster and had ended up with his hair all sticking out.

"No, it's takes special stuff to get it out," Luca told him. "Nonna Sofia, can we... I mean, Ma'am," he said quickly, his voice shifting octaves again with either puberty or embarrassment. "Can we please..."

Nonna Sofia chuckled. "You can call me Nonna if you like, Luca. I won't tell your grandmother." She winked.

It took a bit of a shopping trip to get the stuff they needed to extract lightning from potatoes. Nonna Sofia and Luca went down to the hardware store, while Alberto elected to stay at the house with Flavia, Carlotta, and Celia. Lucrezia's family hung around awkwardly a while, until Uncle Umberto announced that he'd better be going, and they decided to leave with him. Andrea begged to be allowed to stay and see the potato battery, which his parents reluctantly allowed after Carlotta promised to see him home afterwards.

"That boy is just like his father, nothing but trouble!" Aunt Bettina huffed as they headed out to the garden. She said this quite loudly, obviously intending that Alberto should hear it.

"He kept the land monsters from finding out about us," Uncle Girolino reminded her, "and made sure my brother won't be going back to prison. And if he hadn't brought his friend with him, we wouldn't have known that Andrea needs a tutor." He nodded to Luca as they passed. "I wouldn't call any of that trouble."

Alberto smiled. He didn't care if everybody here hated him, but it was still nice to know they didn't necessarily.

When Luca and Nonna Sofia returned with their supplies, they seemed to be very ordinary things – metal wire and a couple of shiny nails, and a package of light bulbs. But Luca put it all together with some potatoes, and showed the other kids how they could feel the tingle of the lightning in their fingers, before using it to make a light bulb glow.

"Is that how humans light their houses?" Flavia asked, fascinated. "With potatoes?" She looked at the light fixture in the ceiling, which was not litduring the daytime but did have clearly similar bulbs in it.

"No, dummy," said Andrea.

"Hey!" Alberto scolded him. "She doesn't come up here. She doesn't know."

"Oh, right. Sorry," Andrea said.

Luca answered Flavia's question. "No, they've got big machines that make lightning out of things like carbone. Everything has electricity in it, though, including people! That's because of what I was telling Andrea when he kept asking questions, about the atoms..."

"Oh!" said Andrea, and leaned closer to listen.

Alberto didn't understand very much of what Luca said that morning, and he was pretty sure his cousins didn't, either – but Andrea and Flavia both listened, absolutely rapt, and so did Alberto. It was always great hearing Luca talk about something that excited him.

"That's the thing land monsters do," Luca explained. "They find hidden stuff, like the lightning in potatoes and carbone, and they figure out how to use it. It's the same thing with the binoculars we used to look at the planets," he added to Flavia. "The secret of how to make faraway things look close is hidden in the glass, and the humans found it."

In all the time Alberto had been collecting Human Stuff, he'd never thought about that. He'd just sort of accepted that humans could do magic, and that was it. Knowing that these secrets were hidden there and they just figured it out, and that sea monsters could do the same thing, was pretty cool. Even if it wasn't what Alberto himself was interested in, he could see why Luca liked it so much.

"Do you think you'll find new stuff and figure out how to use it someday?" asked Andrea.

"Maybe," said Luca. "I don't know. I'm still catching up with all the things humans figured out ahead of me. There's so much. The first time Giulia showed me the Biblioteca, I couldn't believe how many books there were."

"I hope you do," Alberto said. "Discover stuff, I mean. Then I'll get to brag to everybody that I know you!"

The next day, Mike and Carlotta had a surprise for them. Mike had taken the day off work, so that they could take advantage of the sunny weather and go to Pompei Scavi. Even on a weekday it was busy. It was just as hot and bright as they'd been warned, and as Celia had complained, it mostly looked like a lot of rocks... but there was something so cool about knowing that this was a whole city, almost two thousand years old, that still looked almost exactly like the people had left it when they ran away from the volcano. It was even possible to go inside the houses and look at the paintings that had decorated the walls.

One house in particular had a big painting of a naked lady in a seashell, surrounded by humans with wings. It seemed like a strange thing to paint to Alberto, but Luca knew a story about it.

"That's the Nascita di Venere," Luca told his friend. "There's a painting a lot like it in a museum in Firenze, but this one's way older. The story is that Venere came out of the ocean at the island of Cipro, and the people there made her their goddess of love."

"Which is a perfectly reasonable reaction to seeing a beautiful girl walk out of the ocean," Mike said, kissing Carlotta's cheek.

She smiled and shook her head. "In public?"

"Absolutely," he told her.

"Was she a sea monster?" asked Alberto.

"I don't know," said Luca, who had clearly wondered that himself. "The teachers thought the story was totally made up. Maybe we need to ask the people on Cipro."

They were very tired and sunburned by the time they got back to the house that night, despite their best precautions, but the boys didn't care. They'd explored the ruined city from top to bottom and had seen many amazing things, like a huge theatre and a house with bright red walls. Afterwards, Celia had gotten her gelato as promised, and had then fallen asleep with her head on her father's shoulder on the train ride home.

When they arrived, the boys took cold showers to soothe their sunburns, and Carlotta offered them some cream to rub on their shoulders and faces.

"I just wanted to say," she said, smearing it on Luca's lower arms, "that I'm very glad you two came to stay with us."

"You are?" Alberto asked. After his nearly-disastrous attempts to teach Celia to control the Change, he would have thought she'd never want to see them again.

"I am," she said.

"Oh," said Luca, "because people will stop saying that Mike isn't Celia's real father?"

"Partly that," Carlotta said, "but also because Mike and I have been quite worried about Celia starting school this fall. She knows that sea monsters are supposed to be a secret, but children get rowdy, and all it would take is one spilled drink. We've talked about whether we ought to tell her teachers and then might still be a good idea, but we feel a lot better about it now that we know one accident isn't the end of the world." She smiled. "Thank you, Alberto."

"You're welcome," Alberto replied awkwardly. He probably should have left it at that, but he couldn't help himself. "You mean... you're really not mad about the petrol thing?"

"I'm not," Carlotta assured him. "I understand that you meant well. Nothing bad came of it, and you know not to do it again. If you two want to come back next summer, we'd be happy to have you."

"You would?" Luca asked eagerly.

"Of course we would!" said Carlotta. "Celia loves having you, and I'm sure Flavia would enjoy seeing you again. Only if you want to come, of course."

"We'll have to think about it," said Alberto, "but thanks so much!"

The rest of the trip was over far too quickly, which figured: just when Alberto was finally starting to enjoy himself, it was time to go home. He and Luca packed up their things again, and loaded them into the car for the drive back to Napoli Centrale. Nonna Sofia had come to say goodbye, and she hugged them both on the Gennaris' front steps.

"I've been making sure to tell Flavia's fathers about how nice it is in Portorosso and how hospitable both your families were when I visited," she said to them. "I think they're almost convinced."

"I hope so," said Luca. "That would be great!"

Nonna Sofia hugged him again, then turned to Alberto. "May I have a brief word?" she asked him.

"Sure," he replied, as casual as he could. The request still caused him a moment's worry, but he fought it down. Nonna Sofia didn't seem to get angry, even when she said she was. Whatever she wanted to say to him surely wouldn't be bad. It was just private.

She took him halfway down the drive and then looked around as if to check that nobody was watching. Then she said, "I'm very proud of you, Alberto."

Alberto had expected her to maybe say something about his father – this was unexpected, and he had to try not to squirm. "I stole stuff," he pointed out.

Nonna Sofia laughed softly. "Yes, but you did it to protect your father. Strictly speaking it was a bad thing to do, but you did it for the right reason, and you and your friends were very brave and resourceful to do it at all. From what I understand, things might have turned out much worse for everybody if you hadn't. I know you don't enjoy hearing that you're a lot like your father, Alberto... but I think you have all the best parts of him."

Alberto didn't know how to react to that. What would Luca have done? Probably just been polite about it for now. "Thank you, Nonna Sofia."

Sofia patted his cheek, then took a deep breath. "Also... your father is here. He wanted to be able to say goodbye. You don't have to!" she added, as Alberto started looking around in a panic. "Diana apparently offered to have Umberto take him to the train station so he could be there ahead of you, but he said he wanted to have your permission. You can say no. I won't be angry, and I don't think he will, either."

Alberto looked around again, but still didn't see Giancarlo. He swallowed. He didn't want to see his father again, but it wouldn't have to be for long. If they waited, they'd miss their train – and if he said no, he'd probably just end up wondering what it was his father wanted to say.

"Okay," he decided. "As long as it's quick."

Nonna Sofia raised her head and waved at a car parked on the other side of the street. The door opened, and Giancarlo got out. He was holding his hat in his hands as he approached them.

Alberto glanced at Luca, waiting by the car, and saw that his friend was worried. He forced a smiel to tell him it would be okay, but let it drop before he turned back to face his father.

Giancarlo stopped a couple of metres away, as if he were afraid of getting too close. There, he took a deep breath and looked at the hat he was carrying.

"I'm sorry for ruining your trip, Alberto," he said. "I... Ma told me not to come talk to you and then I went and did it anyway, and all this happened. I..." he shook his head. "I wanted you to be proud of me."

Alberto didn't know what to say to that, either. Fortunately, Nonna Sofia did.

"It's not Alberto's job to be proud of you, Gianni," she said. "It's yours to be proud of him."

Giancarlo nodded, and kept his eyes down.

The silence seemed thick and gooey, like cioccolata. Alberto didn't like it at all. He tried to think of something to say, and all he could come up with was, "did you get the job at the shipyard?"

"Yeah," said Giancarlo. "It won't be as much fun as finding shells for the jewellery factor but it'll do. Bruno says hi, by the way. He said he's gonna miss you. And Polly said it was nice to meet you."

"You talked to Polly?"

"Yeah." Giancarlo grimaced. "She dumped me."

"Sorry," said Alberto. He'd really only told her about Theresa just to be mean. Maybe that had been wrong after all. Signorina Sorrentino had turned out to be nice, but...

"Yeah, that's not your fault," said Giancarlo. "I told her I'm a sea monster months ago and said it was because I didn't want to lie to her, but with those guys in town, she would have found out about the other stuff I did lie about anyway. So... yeah, that was coming."

Nonna Sofia nodded to him. "You're doing very well," she said. Alberto thought her tone was rather patronizing, but Giancarlo didn't seem to notice.

"Thanks, Ma," he said.

"Will you be coming back next summer?" Nonna Sofia asked Alberto. "I would love to see you, and I'm sure Flavia would, too. It sounds like you have some other friends as well. You could even come for Christmas," she suggested.

"No, Christmas I do with Uncle Massimo and with Luca's family," said Alberto. "But maybe next summer. Like I said, I need to think about it."

"You do that," said Nonna Sofia. "You've got all year, after all."