Page 63 of My Dark Ever After

Philippe followed soundlessly behind me, but his presence didn’t feel oppressive. After what had happened in Impruneta, I was grateful for a bodyguard.

When we reached the Piazza del Duomo, I ducked into the cathedral, which was free to the public, and wandered the illustrious interior. It gave me goose bumps to think about the first stone being erected in the 1200s, to know that so many lives had touched this place and been touched by its existence in return.

It didn’t surprise me that my feet took me to Domenico di Michelino’s painting of Dante and scenes fromThe Divine Comedy.

It was ironic that Raffa had read to me from the volume and that we both liked to quote the famous Italian poet when the story hadspecifically been crafted as a warning to people not to sin and forfeit their immortal souls. Each of the nine circles of hell had its horrors, and none of them were sugarcoated.

Did I want my liver pecked at by a bird of prey every day for the rest of time?

Did I want to be as Sisyphus was, eternally rolling a boulder up an endless hill?

Raffa liked to say he was the only god in his life and he made his own rules, and something of that philosophy must have rubbed off on me.

Because I truly believed there was no deeper level of hell than a life without Raffa Romano at my side.

Even if, in the end, when I closed my eyes to greet death, I faced eternal damnation. Better to have lived free and well than not at all.

I had to think even Dante, with all his moral wisdom and posturing, would have sinned with his beloved Beatrice if he had been given the chance. It was easy for him to write that he “never allowed Love to govern” him when he had never once met the object of his affection. Knowing her, being intimate with her, could he still have allowed reason to rule?

I was a reasonable person, a numbers-based, fact-oriented thinker.

Yet the love I had for Raffa and the feelings he had unearthed inside me about life and myself defied all my previous expectations and experiences.

Knowing him and loving him made it easier to know and love myself.

And the truth was, we were not so different as I thought we should be.

He was a good man born to the dark, and I was a girl born in the light who had always yearned for something peeking out at me from the shadows.

Eravamo come due gocce d’acqua.

Two drops of water. Made of the same substance.

Anime gemelle.

Identical hearts or twin souls.

“Scusi,” a female voice said from over my shoulder.

I turned, startled out of my reverie to see an elderly woman staring at me with wide eyes. She was dressed entirely in black, her silver-streaked dark hair a vivid contrast, her eyes a brown so deep they seemed almost black.

“Io ti conosco,” she murmured, reaching out with a shaking hand to clutch at my forearm. Her knuckles were like the gnarled roots of a tree, big diamonds winking from a ring on every finger, even her thumb.

I know you, she’d said in a thin, wavering voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said in Italian, placing my hand over hers. “You don’t. I am just visiting from America.”

“No,” she insisted, and suddenly her frailty fell away like a shroud, her grasp on my arm painfully tight, her thin lips twisted into a snarl. “I know you. Why do you lie?”

“I’m not lying,” I argued, gently but firmly trying to pry her hand off my arm.

Philippe moved forward from where he had taken a seat to wait for me in a pew just a handful of yards away, but I shook my head. She was just a confused old woman. I didn’t want to frighten her with big, stern-faced Philippe.

“Why do you lie?” she repeated, her voice getting louder so that we were starting to draw attention. “Why did you leave without saying goodbye?”

“Nonna.” A preteen boy who was all limbs and knobby bones appeared at her side, taking her arm and shooting me a helpless smile that was half grimace. “I am so sorry. My grandmother is not very well.”

“It’s okay,” I said as he helped remove her hand from me. “Just a misunderstanding.”