Jess emerges from the bath and opens her closet. She bought all new clothes, no black. When she goes downstairs, Conor introduces her to Angelo, Laura’s son, who is a little surly. Conor says he has Jess’s first client, someone who wants a drawing of the piazza with the statue of Maria Beatrice, and her terrace offers the best view. Conor says that Angelo gilds marble for a living. Jess thinks that if Angelo had a good personality, he’d be dangerous.

The next morning, Jess draws the piazza and watches the sunrise while she drinks her coffee. She picks up her phone and writes about going to her Grandma Cap’s house on the day she died. Her grandma reported that her bird, Oscar Hammerstein, flew away. She also said that Bobby wasn’t right for Jess. Then Jess watched the older woman’s soul leave her body, convinced that Oscar had completed his mission: To fly her grandmother’s soul to heaven. Jess feels closer to her grandmothers in Italy.

Later, Jess and Conor take a car to Mauro LaFortezza’s quarry, Massa-Carrara, from which Michelangelo used to get his marble. They meet LaFortezza, who is eager to see Jess’s work. He explains that they’ve stopped using explosives to mine and have returned to older methods. When Jess gets back to Laura’s, she drinks wine on her terrace and watches the sunset, vowing never to miss one while she’s there.

This is the first time Jess has ever lived alone, and she realizes that her fear of it was completely unnecessary. Solitude feels like a gift. She gets an email from Detective Campovilla, asking for her current address. Jess visits an art museum, struck by the gold everywhere. Conor meets her, and they see Angelo. They listen to Professoressa Farah Adeel, an engineer from London, lecture about the history of mining in the region.

Afterward, Angelo invites them all to his studio to see his work. It is large, and he explains his process. It’s personal, as he uses his own technique to apply the gold. Jess sketches while he works. She recalls rolling cavatelli with her Grammy B. This grandmother told her that living with beauty is as important as the food one eats. Jess can see that beauty sustains Angelo.

When Jess says she wants to visit Sicily, Angelo offers to take her, and she wonders if he’s flirting. He sees her self-portrait in her sketchbook, and he says she’s much prettier than the “miserable woman” she drew. They discuss her home, her divorce, and her decision to come to Italy. He kisses her, but she pulls away because he has a girlfriend. On her way home, she stops for an espresso, and a kitten follows her home. Adopting the kitten is a big deal because her mother never permitted pets and Bobby was allergic, though Jess always wanted one. She likes that the kitten needs her.

In her next journal, Jess writes about the moment her parents told her they lost her college money that Jess had saved in a “bad market.” Her mother cried, and, though she was all packed, her father asked her to delay her move to help them. She felt robbed. She was ashamed of them, of the life “held together by duct tape and despair” (193). Jess couldn’t understand why this happened because she was a hard worker, got good grades, did everything she was supposed to do.