Page 64 of My Dark Ever After

“My baby’s baby,” she whimpered, clutching at her grandson even as she kept her eyes pinned on me.

“Signora Pietra.” An older man wearing clerical robes hustled out a side door and offered his arm to the elderly woman. “Please, why don’t you come sit in my office for a moment and calm down.”

Something in the back of my mind lit up, an internal alarm I wasn’t even aware I had set up.

“Pietra?” I asked, stepping forward as they started to move away.

The preteen boy shot me a wary glance and helped hustle the group faster toward the door, then closed it behind them with a resounding thud without answering my question.

There was something working at the back of my brain, chewing over a problem I half remembered.

It had started germinating when I’d seen Beatrice’s supposed tomb.

“Pietra di Beatrice” had been inscribed on the side.

Pietra. Another word for “stone.”

Sasso, masso, roccia,Leo had said before he was cut off.

He might have finished by addingpietra.

My heart tripped into a sprint, knocking so hard against my rib cage it ached. I scurried over to Philippe, who was standing just on the other side of the pew, having watched the entire interlude with the elderly woman.

“Philippe, can you take me to the Uffizi?” I asked in Italian. “Raffa said they would be a while, and there is something I would like to see.”

He frowned at me. “They will be done soon, Guinevere. I think it best if we go back to the car and wait as Signor Romano wanted.”

“Please?” I asked, utilizing the doe eyes that Raffa liked to refer to so much. “It won’t take long.”

He sighed wearily but nodded, walking toward the exit with his hand on my arm to keep me by his side through the swarms of warm bodies.

I bit my lip to keep giddy laughter from escaping, my knee jiggling with restlessness the entire drive to the Uffizi’s Historical Archive and Research Department. Usually, you needed an appointment and a supervisor to visit the archives, but a quick search on my phone helpedme figure out a plan to get through the protocols. As soon as we parked, I leaped from the car even though I was aware that Philippe was shadowing me.

“Buongiorno,” I greeted the woman at the front desk. “I know you typically need an appointment to visit, but I was hoping to visit my aunt Simonetta. I’m visiting from Pistoia as a surprise.”

“Oh.” The receptionist, who wore a name tag that readPaolaand looked almost as ancient as some of the records she guarded, beamed at me. “That is so sweet of you, dear. Margharita, isn’t it?”

“Frederica,” I corrected, just in case she was testing me instead of showcasing some memory loss in her older age. “But my sister’s name is Morena—maybe that’s who you are thinking of.”

“Ah,” she said, even brighter than before, sinking slightly into her chair as she relaxed. “Of course—Morena is off at school in the south. Well, Simonetta should be in her office. I assume you know the way?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Well then, just sign in and I’ll let you through.”

She pushed the attendance sheet toward me and watched as I carefully wrote “Frederica Abate.”

“Thank you, Paola,” I said with a warm smile as I started to move toward the turnstiles, holding my breath for a moment before they gave way and let me through into the archives.

I turned to see Philippe frowning after me before he reluctantly took a seat in the reception area to guard me from there.

I was grateful for the space, because I had no idea what I would find if my hunch was right, and I wanted to be able to process it in peace.

It wasn’t my first time in the archives. I’d visited once with Ludo in the summer, so I knew where to go to find the documents from the early seventies, when my father was born somewhere in the region. There were no other people in the stacks with me, but I couldn’t help feeling on edge, as if someone might come across me at any second and arrest me for my curiosity.

At worst, they would make me leave.

So why did it feel like I was on the edge of a cliff, staring down at the churning sea below, my toes hanging over the rock?