“Wait. How did they become three separate rocks?” Lainey says.
“There are actually four. There’s a smaller one you can’t really see from this vantage point…. But to answer your question: erosion. Thousands of years of pounding wind and water. And to further tax your memory,” I say with a smile, “each rock has its own individual name.”
“Uh-oh,” Lainey says.
“That one’s Stella,” I say, pointing to the rock on our left, closest to the shoreline.
“Well, that’s darling,” Lainey says. “And easy to remember!”
I point to the one farthest from land. “That one’s Faraglione di Fuori—”
“Fuori? As in fury?” Lainey asks.
“No. It’s taken from foris, the Latin word for ‘door,’ which can also refer to anything beyond a threshold—like outside,” I say, amazed by how often I use my high school Latin.
“And the middle one?” Lainey asks, pointing to the most distinctive rock of the three, with its small open archway at the bottom.
“Take a guess,” I say.
She smirks and says, “Lisa? Angela? Pamela? Renée?”
I laugh at her old-school hip-hop reference. “Nope. Di Mezzo.”
“Mezzo means ‘middle,’ right?”
“Yep. You know—like mezzanine…or mezzo-soprano,” I say. “Legend has it that if you kiss your sweetheart under the arch of the di Mezzo, you stay with them forever.”
“Oh, wow,” Hannah says with a wistful look.
I assume she’s thinking about Grady until she glances at me and says, “Summer would have loved that.”
“Why?” Lainey asks. “Because she was so superstitious?”
“Well, yeah. That too,” Hannah says. “But I meant the romantic part.”
I look down, feeling uneasy, just as I did last night at dinner. It’s hard for me to get used to Hannah knowing what happened between Summer and me. Maybe it’s in my head, but I still have the feeling that she’s not entirely comfortable with it—or more likely, that she’s upset I kept such a big secret for so long.
I tune back in to hear Lainey and Hannah discussing Summer’s obsession with rom-coms. Lainey mentions Sixteen Candles and Mystic Pizza, then starts quoting from Notting Hill. “ ‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy—’ ”
“ ‘Asking him to love her,’ ” Hannah finishes with a sigh.
“She ate that stuff up,” Lainey says.
“Every bite,” Hannah says.
“And how about her love of Taylor Swift?” Lainey says.
“You have to give her credit, though,” Hannah says. “She was a Swiftie before it was cool to be a Swiftie.”
“You mean before Travis Kelce put her on the map?” I quip, trying to get a rise out of them. They don’t take the bait.
“Gosh,” Hannah says. “How much would she have loved the Eras tour?”
“I know.” Lainey sighs. “I thought about Summer the entire show. Especially when Taylor sang her old stuff.”
Same, I think, getting a sharp pang in my chest. I’d gotten tickets for Nicole for her birthday, but I’d be lying if I said my mind wasn’t on Summer at the concert.
The girls finally fall silent; then Lainey asks if anyone is in the mood to go shopping.
I make a face and tell her it’s too nice a day to spend inside stores. “How about a hike down to the sea?”
“Why do we have to hike? Didn’t you hear Alessandro say that we can take the hotel car down—”
“Christ, Lainey. This isn’t Machu Picchu. It’s more of a walk than a hike. And it’s downhill.”
“Okay, fine. Fine,” Lainey says, rolling her eyes. “I’ll do the stupid hike.”
“Attagirl,” I say, giving her a light punch on the shoulder.
—
After a quick breakfast, we walk over to the nearby Augustus Gardens. Hannah goes crazy for the flowers, naming them all, from the more familiar geraniums, begonias, and dahlias to a shrublike yellow flower called “broom” that I’ve never heard of. I agree they’re pretty, but I’m more interested in the history, including a marble monument to Vladimir Lenin, of all people. According to the plaque, it was commissioned in the nineteen-sixties by the Soviet Embassy.
The best part about the gardens, though, has to be the sweeping views in all directions. On one side, you can see the Faraglioni. On the other side, you look down over Marina Piccola and the incredible Via Krupp, a dramatic switchback road zigzagging down the cliff, connecting the gardens to the beach.
As we walk, I play tour guide, telling them that the road was commissioned by German industrialist Friedrich Alfred Krupp so that he could get from his own mansion in town down to his marine biology research vessel.
Lainey looks bored until I add a footnote. “Old man Krupp also used the path to get to his secret grotto, where he had sex orgies with local youths.”
