Page 15

T roubled, Julia headed to the kitchen, passing a dining room table with a ceramic plate with green, blue, and yellow swirls, laid next to green goblets and bottles of Chianti and Panna water. A matching bowl held thick slices of rustic bread, next to tall golden sunflowers in a glass vase.

“Hello.” Julia entered the kitchen, where Anna Mattia was grinding fresh pepper into a small tureen of hearty tomato soup that smelled pungently of basil, lemon, and cooked onion. “Wow, what’s for dinner?”

“ Acquacotta , soup with tomat’, bean, onion, litt’ bit cabbage.” Anna Mattia smiled, setting down the pepper grinder. “You find Signora?”

“Yes, I saw her photo, too.” Julia’s thoughts had churned the whole way home. “Do I look like her?”

Anna Mattia placed a domed lid on the tureen, scanning Julia’s face anew. “Yes, a litt’. This is why I say you are family.”

Julia felt validated, which only intensified the mystery. “Did she have blue eyes?”

“Yes.”

“And what color hair before she went gray, do you know?”

“Like you.” Anna Mattia met her eye, significantly. “I ’ave ’er pitch’.”

“Her picture ?” Julia asked, surprised. “You have it? Not burned?”

“No, I keep.”

Thank God. “When did you take it?”

Anna Mattia’s face fell into deep folds. “She ask, when she know she die.”

Aw. “Did you take the picture on her crypt?”

“Yes.” Anna Mattia straightened, smoothing down her housedress. “Please wash ’ands, go sit. I serve.”

“That’s okay, I can help.” Julia crossed to the sink.

“ I do, thank you.” Anna Mattia picked up the tureen and headed into the dining room, and Julia decided to accept that Anna Mattia was more comfortable serving her, a good problem to have. She washed her hands, then left the kitchen.

“Are there any other pictures of her?”

“Yes, I ’ave. Piero get.” Anna Mattia poured water into one glass and Chianti into the other. “Please, sit.”

“Thanks.” Julia sat, enjoying the vaguely maternal vibe while Anna Mattia lifted the tureen lid and ladled some soup into the bowl, beaming.

“ Perfetto .”

Julia had to agree. “It looks delicious. I’d love to learn to cook these dishes.”

“Okay, I teach.” Anna Mattia nodded. “Now, you see my pitch’?”

“Yes, please.”

“ Buon appetito .”

After dinner, Julia sat alone in the dining room.

The tomato soup had been amazingly flavorful, with the perfect touch of garlic and onion, making a full meal with the fresh Tuscan bread.

She’d drunk two glasses of Chianti, which she was coming to adore.

Dessert was homemade almond cookies, buttery and light, then Anna Mattia had cleared the table, done the dishes, and gone back to her house.

Julia poured another glass of Chianti, sipped some, and eyed the three photographs in front of her, which she’d arranged from the earliest to the most recent.

The first photo showed Rossi with her arm around Anna Mattia in an adorably girlfriendy pose.

Both women had happy grins and carefree expressions, looking directly into the camera.

Rossi was wearing a yellow cotton shift that showed shapely legs in T-strap sandals.

She was a head taller than Anna Mattia, which made her about Julia’s height.

Her build was thinner, however, and lankier.

The second photo showed Rossi frowning as she stood in the vineyard.

She shielded her eyes against the sun and was alone except for a big white Maremmano, not Bianco.

Her face had lengthened, and a fixed frown deepened the draping around her mouth.

She was thinner and looked sloppy in a stained white T-shirt and jeans.

The third photo was downright disturbing, a close-up in which Rossi was shooing the camera away, her hand blurred.

Her hair was messy, and her eyes flashed with rage, an extreme reaction to having her picture taken.

She had on a white dress that looked worn and stained.

Her arms and legs were like sticks. Her feet were bare.

Julia scanned the photos like an age progression from the earliest to most recent, watching Rossi descend into madness.

She took pictures of the photos, then enlarged the most recent one, zeroing in on Rossi’s eyes.

They glittered a sharp, piercing blue, clearly unhinged, and Julia wondered if she was looking at her own future.

She felt horrified, confused, and exhausted. She checked her phone, surprised it was only 8:15 p.m. She couldn’t remember when she’d slept the whole night.

It was time for bed.

Julia hesitated at the threshold of Rossi’s bedroom.

It was dark inside, and she felt the wall for a light switch, but there weren’t any.

She made her way to the bedside table and turned on a lamp with an enameled base of spiky green leaves.

It had a low-wattage bulb that left in shadow the corners of the large room.

She looked around for another lamp, but found none.

The windows were open, and the bedroom was cold.

Outside was the chirping of crickets and a weird screeching.

She went to the window and looked out, but it was too dark to see anything.

Clouds obscured the moon, and the vineyard was a black blur.

There were no lights or even a demarcation where trees met sky.

Bianco wasn’t in sight. She felt as if she were looking into a bottomless black bowl.

The air was still damp from the storm, and she tried to close the window, but it was stuck. She tried another window, but that was stuck, too. The screeching stopped, then started again.

She closed the curtains, then went to the other windows and closed their curtains. She went to the window by the bed, which overlooked Anna Mattia and Piero’s carriage house. It was dark, with no lights on inside.

Julia crossed to the door and looked for a way to lock it, but there was none, only a keyhole. Anna Mattia had told her Rossi didn’t lock her interior doors, which she resolved to fix as soon as possible. Julia closed her door, then told herself she was being ridiculous. She was safe here.

She went to her suitcase on the reclining couch and rummaged for something to sleep in.

She undressed quickly, slipped into an oversized Eagles T-shirt, and used the bathroom, which had white tile, a porcelain pedestal sink, and a large terra-cotta tub.

She brushed her teeth and rinsed her face, then padded out.

She set her phone on the night table and was too tired to bother finding her charger. She pulled aside the coverlet and sat down, then turned out the lamp, plunging herself into darkness.

Signora is ’ere too. The dead are always with.

Julia found herself looking around, for what she didn’t know.

The bedroom was Rossi’s for fifty years.

The woman had died in this very bed. The pillows made a faint whiteness against the dark headboard.

If Rossi’s spirit would be anywhere, it was here.

The screeching outside burst into sound, a weird animal noise.

Julia startled, jittery. She forced herself to ease back onto the bed, then lowered until her head hit the pillow. She started to pull up the coverlet but stopped. It was one thing to sleep on Rossi’s bed, and another to sleep between her sheets. She replaced the coverlet and lay down on top.

Julia eyed the Sforza family fresco on the ceiling. She couldn’t see any of the Sforza family except for Caterina, because the dim outline of her figure was life-size, lying opposite her.

A wave of fatigue swept over her. It had been an endless first day. She’d drunk too much Chianti. She’d cried in a vineyard. She’d found a pearl. She’d missed Mike so deeply, acutely, painfully. She had to sleep. She closed her eyes, beginning to doze.

A chill fluttered over her bare legs.

She looked up.

Two gargantuan, enraged eyes glared down at her from Caterina Sforza’s face, their gigantic irises glinting electric blue. The tree was growing bigger, its branches reaching down to her. The dragons in the coat of arms breathed fire. The vipers opened their fanged maws to eat her alive.

“No!” Julia jumped out of the bed in horror. She bolted away from the fresco.

She flattened her back against the wall. Her heart pounded. She trembled uncontrollably. The fresco roared to life before her terrified eyes. Branches zoomed this way and that, growing in superspeed, their wooden limbs sharpening into pikes threatening to impale her.

No, no, no, no.

Julia tried to scream. No sound came out.

She shrieked and shrieked for help. She couldn’t utter a word.

She fled to the corner of the room, quivering in fear, gasping for breath.

Vipers snaked from the living fresco, hissing and hissing, more and more of them, growing heads after heads after heads like hydras, whipping them around, rolling black eyes, flicking long red tongues, and opening their mouths wider and wider, their jaws positively unhinged, showing the pink of their endless gullets and the ivory of their fangs snapping as they lunged toward her, their spikes only millimeters from her face, trying to devour her.

No, no, no, help me God.

Julia curled into a ball, reduced to a quivering child, crying and praying she wouldn’t be swallowed whole, stabbed, burned alive by the black dragons breathing fire into a larger and larger conflagration, spewing fireballs of red orange and gold at her, superheating her, scorching her skin, incinerating her very flesh.

She screamed in pain and agony but couldn’t hear herself, and a white-hot sun glowing bigger and bigger and bigger seared her eyes, blinding her, and she covered her face with her blistering and blackened hands, her skin falling charred from her flesh, praying for the end to come, praying for death itself.

End this pain, end it, kill me now.

Julia cried uncontrollably, curled as tight as she could, tortured and dying, her body torn apart by the vipers and stabbed by the pikes and burned to an unrecognizable black crisp by the raging sun and finally her last breaths leaked from the scraps of char that used to be her lungs and the breath turned into air and then into ether and then into a blue light that vanished in the night.

Julia woke up in bed with a start. She wasn’t curled in the corner. She wasn’t burned or stabbed or bitten. She blinked, wondering if she was awake or asleep.

She looked around. The bedroom was beginning to lighten. The muslin curtains were pale yellow squares, as if it was dawn. Her eyes itched like she’d been crying. Her nose was congested. She didn’t understand. Had she cried in her sleep? Was that even possible?

She held her hands up in front of her. She could see them in the dim room, then fingers intact, her skin covering her flesh, her bones underneath somewhere, her body animated again. She was alive.

She looked up at the fresco. The blue eyes were back in Caterina’s face, her gaze rigid and lifeless. The Sforza tree was no longer moving. Its branches and limbs were two-dimensional, painted on the ceiling. The dragons and vipers returned to the Sforza coat of arms, a Renaissance frieze.

Julia realized she must’ve had a nightmare. She felt exhausted even though she’d just woken up. She was drenched with sweat. Her Eagles shirt stuck to her body.

The sheets were wet with perspiration under the coverlet.

She told herself to calm down. She knew she’d had a nightmare but it had been so real. She averted her eyes, afraid to look up at the ceiling, terrified it would come to life again. She’d never had such a harrowing dream in her life.

She squeezed her eyes shut, praying for the first time in a long time.