There was no food left in the house. Franny had forgotten how much food her children could consume, and everyone else, too, always nicking little pieces of the bread she was saving for the next day’s panzanella.

“Who wants to come grocery shopping with me? I’ll throw in lunch. Who’s with me?” she asked the room at large—Charles and Lawrence were off exploring a nearby beach, and Carmen and Bobby were off running up and down the mountain. Jim was reading in the living room. Only Sylvia was standing near enough to hear, directly in front of the open refrigerator door.

“God, yes. Please.”

Franny hadn’t driven a stick in several decades, but those muscle memories never really went away. Jim offered a three-minute refresher course, slightly alarmed at the thought of Franny driving on foreign roads, but she insisted that she knew what she was doing. Sylvia crossed herself as she lowered her body into the car. “Just get me back alive in time for Joan.”

“As if I’d kill you without giving you the chance to see him again,” Franny said, and turned the key in the ignition. She put her left foot down on the clutch, and her right on the gas, but the movement was not as fluid as it had once been, so many years out of practice, and the car lurched forward. Franny’s face purpled, and Sylvia screamed. Jim was still standing outside the car, his hands gripping tightly at his elbows. Gallant men always drove stick, and taught their children. It was an important life skill, like having good knives and speaking a foreign language. Franny waved Jim off and backed out slowly, her spleen somewhere in her throat. “It’s fine,” she said, more to herself than to Sylvia. “I know what I’m doing. Everyone relax.”

According to Gemma’s notes, there was a super-sized grocery store about thirty minutes away, closer to the center of the island, larger and better stocked than the one Franny and Charles had gone to in Palma. Franny felt better once they were on the highway—there had been a few gentle stalls at stop signs on the road through Pigpen, but so what, no one was grading her. Once they were moving at a good clip, she felt her legs relax into a good rhythm, this one down, this one up. Sylvia hit buttons on the radio, which seemed to play only dance music and seventies American pop—Franny cried out for Sylvia to stop when she got to a station playing Elton John.

“It’s like the land that time forgot,” Sylvia said.

“I think you mean it’s like the land that forgot time. This is the way it should be—Elton John on the radio and the best ham in the world. And family.”

“Nice afterthought, Mom.” Sylvia rolled her eyes and stared out the window.

The highway downgraded when they hit the outskirts of Palma, slowing to a one-lane road with stoplights, which meant that Franny had more opportunities to make the car stutter, die a little death, and then be revived. They were sitting at a red light, just a few miles before they were to hit the grocery store, when Franny noticed a large compound to their right—the Nando Filani International Tennis Centre. Without thinking, she made the turn.

“Pretty sure this isn’t the grocery store,” Sylvia said.

“Oh, zip it. We’re having an adventure.” Franny slowly pulled through the tennis center’s open gate and into the parking lot.

Nando Filani was Mallorca’s best and only hope at a grand slam or a gold medal. Twenty-five and surly, he stalked the edges of the court like Agassi or Sampras, hitting enormous serves that aced his opponents more often than not. He’d gotten in trouble a bit on the tour—someone’s teeth had been knocked out, which he swore was an accident with an errant ball—and this tennis school was his way of paying reparations. Tennis players, after all, were supposed to be ambassadors of goodness, all white shorts and silver platters. It was a sport for the civilized, not merely the athletic. Franny had played a bit in high school, though she’d never been much good, but it was the only sport that all four Posts could stand to watch, which in turn meant that it was the one sport they could talk about with one another. Sylvia cared about it the least, of course, but every few years there was a player handsome enough to keep her minimally engaged.

The air was full of thwacks and grunts—the sounds of balls hitting racquets, of tennis stars in the making. Franny hurried around from the driver’s side of the car to a fence just beside the main buildings. Through the fence, she could see a dozen rows of tennis courts, many of them filled by children. Franny murmured appreciation for a diminutive brunette’s excellent serve, and then hurried back across the parking lot. Sylvia leaned against the side of the car.

“Mom.”

Franny grasped the fence on the other side, which hid another row of courts, these less populated by children.

“Mom!”

Franny turned, her face open and confused, as if Sylvia had woken her from a dream. “What is it?”

“What are we doing here?” Sylvia slowly peeled herself off the car and trudged over to her mother’s side. It was warmer at the bottom of the mountain, and the sun was shining directly overhead. “It’s too hot.”

“We’re looking for Nando, of course!” It was smack between Wimbledon (which Nando had won the previous year, though this year he was runner-up to the Serb) and the US Open (which he hadn’t ever won, being better on both clay and grass), and so it seemed possible that he actually might be at home, training. “Come on, I want to go inside.”

Sylvia slumped onto Franny’s shoulder. She’d been taller than her mother since she was eleven. “Only if you promise that if, for some ungodly reason, Nando Filani is standing directly inside that door, you will not speak to him, and we can turn around and go directly to the grocery store.”

Franny lifted a hand to her heart. “I swear.” They both knew that she was lying.

The office was clean and modern, with a large dry-erase schedule on one wall and a pretty young woman sitting behind a counter. Franny grabbed Sylvia by the elbow and marched straight up. “Hola,” she said.

“Hola. Qué tal?” said the woman.

“Habla inglés? My daughter and I are enormous fans of Filani’s, and we were wondering about lessons. Is it possible to sign up? We’re in Mallorca for about ten days, and we’d just love the chance to play where he played. You must be so proud of him.” Franny nodded at the idea of all that national pride, wrinkling her nose for all the mothers in Mallorca.

“Lessons for two?” The woman held up two fingers. “Dos?”

“Oh, no,” Franny said. “I haven’t played since I was a teenager.”

“One?” The woman held up a single finger. “Lessons for one?”

Sylvia twisted her body into a pretzel. “Mom,” she said. “I respect that you’re trying to do something here, but I’m not exactly sure what it is, and I’m pretty sure that I have no interest. Or sneakers.” She pointed to her flip-flops and waggled her slightly dusty-looking toes.

“Do you have a list of instructors?” Franny put her elbows on the counter. “Or any reading material? About the center?”

The woman slid a brochure across the counter. Franny picked it up, pretending to read the Spanish until she realized the reverse was printed in English. Her eyes skimmed the short paragraphs and the glossy photographs of Nando Filani until the very bottom of the page. In a large photo, Nando had his arm thrown around the shoulder of an older man. They were both wearing baseball hats and squinting into the sun, but Franny could make out the other man’s features clearly enough.

“I’m sorry, perdón, is this Antoni Vert?”

The woman nodded. “Sí.”

“Does he still live in Mallorca?”

“Sí.” The woman pointed north. “Three kilometers.”