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J ulia didn’t get home until dinnertime, and she entered the villa and stopped in the dining room, where the table had already been set.

She picked up her plates, silverware, and wineglass and took them into the kitchen, where Anna Mattia was sliding a baking dish from the oven, its top glistening with tomatoes.

“Perfect timing!” Julia crossed to her. “What’s for dinner?”

“ Polenta with mozzarella and broccoli rabe , like lasagne .” Anna Mattia smiled, and Julia felt relieved that Anna Mattia wasn’t looking at her funny, after last night.

“Okay if I eat in here, with you?”

Anna Mattia shrugged. “You like Forlì?”

“Yes, but guess what?” Julia set the kitchen table and sat down. “We caught another man following me.”

“ é vero? ” Anna Mattia’s hooded eyes flared in surprise. “What ’appen ?”

Julia filled Anna Mattia in while she cut her a serving and placed it onto her plate, shaking her head.

“These men, they jealous your money!”

“That’s what Gianluca thinks.” Julia forked the polenta into her mouth, aware she was eating her feelings. Luckily, they were delicious. The polenta tasted perfectly moist, like lasagne , only lighter. “This is wonderful.”

“ Grazie . The carabinieri no ’elp?”

“They say they can’t. Not yet.” Julia ate some broccoli rabe , wondering if she was becoming addicted to garlic, and Anna Mattia poured Chianti into her glass.

“Very bad! You stay with us tonight?”

“No, thanks.” Julia hated to put them out again. “I’ll stay downstairs, maybe in the living room. I want to look over those books that Gianluca brought.”

“I put in living room. Buon appetito .” Anna Mattia went to the sink, and Julia ate more broccoli rabe while she picked up her phone.

The home screen showed an email notification from 23andMe.

It was the results of her ancestry test; she had sent in her saliva sample before she left Philadelphia.

The subject line read: Click here for your results!

Gulp. Julia braced herself, clicked, and skimmed the top line: JULIA, your ancestry composition is 98.6% ITALIAN.

“Oh my God!” Julia almost choked on her food.

“What?” Anna Mattia turned from the sink, sponge in hand, and Julia scanned the results, incredulous. JULIA, YOU ARE 98.6% Italian from the Tuscany region, going back three generations. A tiny gray sliver in a pie chart showed that the remaining percentage of her ancestry was from northern Italy.

“I’m Tuscan ! Three generations back, that’s my grandparents ! That could be Rossi !”

Anna Mattia frowned in confusion. “So no ’merican?”

“I’m Italian American.” Julia felt a thrill, as if an electrical switch had been thrown. “This is amazing! It means I actually have Italian blood.”

“You?”

“Yes! Now we know that I have Italian blood, Tuscan blood, that means Rossi could be my grandmother. But it doesn’t mean she is .

If I didn’t have Italian blood, then I would know for sure she wasn’t my grandmother.

” Julia held up the phone, and Anna Mattia came over, peering at the screen.

Julia pointed to the gray sliver of a pie chart.

“See this? Most of my blood is Tuscan, but some is northern Italian, maybe from Milan. Maybe Rossi was related to Caterina Sforza. Maybe I am, too!”

“ Mamma mia! ” Anna Mattia beamed, linking her fingers.

“What if Rossi really did have a child?” Julia returned her attention to the phone, scrolling quickly to the next section, which was LIVING RELATIVES .

It read, JULIA, you have NO living relatives reported.

She reminded herself it meant only that none of her living relatives had been tested and agreed to disclose their results.

It didn’t mean she didn’t have any living relatives.

Julia kept reading, excited. The next section was a list of health information, and she read the highlights aloud: “Guess what, I do not have the brCA1/brCA2 variants for breast cancer.”

Anna Mattia frowned, not understanding.

“I wonder if Rossi had it. I don’t think everybody who gets breast cancer has that gene, anyway, so it probably doesn’t mean anything.

” Julia figured the implications. “I don’t think that necessarily means I’m not her granddaughter, either.

It could mean I didn’t inherit that gene.

I have to ask the investigator.” She felt a surge of happiness. “But I’m Tuscan!”

“Super Tuscan!” Anna Mattia clapped.

Julia laughed, giddy. She finally knew a fact about her own birth, for the very first time. It made her feel validated, too. Her father had German ancestry and her mother Irish, but even before they’d told her she was adopted, she’d never felt of them. She’d sensed she wasn’t theirs .

And she’d been right .

Maybe she was intuitive, after all.

Later, Julia curled up on the couch in the living room, a biography of Caterina Sforza on her lap.

Gianluca had brought her a wonderful stack of books, and she couldn’t wait to read them.

Discovering she had Tuscan ancestry excited her, but she was trying not to jump to the conclusion that she was related to Rossi, much less Caterina.

A bronze lamp on an end table shed a dim circle of light, and Piero had made a fire in the fireplace, which warmed the room and illuminated its far side.

Julia exhaled, trying to metabolize the fact that the white Fiat had been following her.

Piero had fixed the doors at her request, and she’d locked herself inside.

But she wasn’t worried only about external threats anymore.

She worried about what was going on inside the house, even in her own head.

You’re heartbroken.

Julia didn’t know if that was why she’d been seeing things and having nightmares.

She felt on tenterhooks, on guard against whatever was going to happen, if anything.

Hypervigilant , as her therapist said. She even had a kitchen knife and a flashlight beside her.

She didn’t know what good they would do, but she was trying to help herself feel safe.

Julia opened the book, and her uneasy gaze fell on the line: Even in her grief, Caterina forced herself to go on. The words resonated in her heart. She and Caterina were both young widows, and Julia felt like she’d been forcing herself to go on ever since Mike died.

Suddenly the fireplace popped, and she startled.

She looked over at the fire, checking because it didn’t have a screen.

Orange flames blazed and flickered on the fireback.

Glowing sparks drifted up the chimney, rising like tiny orange suns.

The fire flickered on the ceiling fresco of an idyllic Tuscan landscape and on the white plaster walls.

There were pale rectangles where art had been hung, and the paint peeled and bubbled in patches.

Cracks ran up and down the walls as if the villa could no longer bear its own weight.

Julia’s attention was drawn to one of the cracks on the wall, beyond the couch. She blinked, wondering if she’d seen something.

In the next moment, a faint blue light began to stream from the crack, thin as a blue vein and ethereal as gas.

Julia gasped when it morphed into an electric blue.

Caterina.