Page 109 of The Unraveling of Julia

“I am.” Courtney snorted. “I’m going tomoonthose assholes.”

59

Julia lay in Rossi’s bed with the coverlet pulled up to her chest. The bedroom was dark, and odd screeches from the vineyard filtered through the curtains. A camera was concealed in the Sforza family tree on the ceiling fresco. It turned out there were cameras in the ceiling fresco in every bedroom, and she wondered who was spying on her, and why. It was scary enough to be followed, but it was creepier to be watched in bed.

Julia turned on her right side, trying to put the camera out of her mind, and her thoughts went to Gianluca. She wished she could be at his side, but she was hoping that Rossi’s bedroom was another thin place. Rossi had died here, and Julia wondered now if her nightmares here had been Caterina, trying to communicate with her, before she knew how.

Close your eyes.

Julia remembered what Helen taught her about how to communicate with Gianluca. She’d done it successfully in his hospital room, where he’d showed her how he’d been run off the road, but she hadn’t gotten her message to him through. She envisioned him in the hospital bed and tried to tell him how she felt in her heart.

You have to live.

You have to get through this.

You have to come back to me and your family.

Julia waited. She didn’t hear Gianluca’s voice. There was only silence. She saw no vision. There was only darkness. She didn’t know if she was communicating with him at all. She feared the drug was out of her system and she was back to her old self. She tried to deny the thought but couldn’t. Maybe she didn’t have a gift, but a side effect. Maybe the drug hadn’t opened a pathway, but only an illusion of one, an altered state already ebbing away. Maybe tonight was the beginning of the end.

Julia turned over, miserable. She’d gone from being terrified of the visions to missing them. She and Gianluca had shared their innermost feelings that way. She wanted that power back, for him. If she couldn’t communicate with him, she couldn’t help him.

Suddenly she was thinking of Mike, and guilt came back to her. She’d gotten him killed and hadn’t been able to help him, either. She buried her head in the pillow. She didn’t want the camera to see. She didn’t want to acknowledge to herself that Gianluca could die, like Mike, because of her.

She thought about fate, and destiny, wondering if she was cursed.

60

The next morning, Julia and Courtney were back in the car, heading to the first school on the list. Julia had barely slept worrying about Gianluca and hadn’t been able to communicate with him. Toward morning, she’d texted Raffaella about how he was doing but hadn’t heard back. She was barely able to focus on the day ahead, as astounding as it was to be close to finding her birth mother.

The Tuscan scenery whizzed past, a blur of golden sunshine, rolling vineyards, cypress trees, and stone villas, but Julia was glued to the outside mirror, on the lookout for the white Fiat, the white van, and a police cruiser. She’d stowed the gun in the glove box, but the fact they needed it gave her no comfort.

Julia’s phone pinged with a text, and she startled, checking the screen. “It’s Raffaella! She texted me back.”

“Read it to me.”

Julia read the text aloud:

My brother is doing a little worse. His temperature is up. They continue his antibiotics.

“Oh no.” Julia’s chest tightened. “What does a ‘little worse’ mean? I hate this. I wish I could see him. Do you think we could try at the end of the day?”

“Sure, can’t blame a girl for asking.”

“Let me text her back.” Julia typed:

Thank you so much. Please give my love to your parents. We will stop in at the end of the day.

Courtney braked at a red light, glancing over. “Lose the ‘so much.’ You’re worse than my mom.”

“I want her to like me.”

“Too late.”

They reached Scuola Elementare di Biaggio, a small stone schoolhouse in Biaggio, a hill town like Croce. Cypress trees screened the parking lot from the road, and when they pulled up, Julia and Courtney could hear children on a playground behind the school.

They parked, got out of the car, and headed for a shiny red lacquer door. Julia pressed a doorbell in a recessed squawk box, and in the next moment, a woman started speaking in rapid Italian.

Julia leaned close to the box. “I’m sorry, I only have English, but I need to come to the office. It’s about one of the teachers. It’s very important.”