The Villa(39)

I shake my head, still smiling. “No. Or, I mean, I wasn’t? Maybe I am now?”

She nods, turning back to the bag. “That’s how it happens, I think.”

“It’s just interesting,” I say, wondering if I’m trying to convince her or myself. “And weird that no one really talks about it that much anymore given that it involved famous people.”

Giulia moves to the fridge, her ponytail swinging. “It’s a good thing people forgot it. I like working here, and I want nice people like you and Signorina Chandler. Not weirdos who come here for murder.”

Fair enough. Villa Aestas is a peaceful, pretty place that doesn’t deserve to be tainted by one bad night fifty years ago.

I’m just about to get up from the table when Giulia adds, “But to answer your question, yes.”

She closes the fridge with a thunk and turns around. “My aunt Elena was working here that summer. She actually testified at the trial. Made her a little famous for a time.”

Giulia sighs, her hand going to her bangs. “Ruined her life, though. Made her think she was somebody when really she was just a part of a somebody’s story.”

Part of a somebody’s story. It’s a twisty turn of phrase, one I immediately like, and I tell myself to remember it later.

“Is she still in Orvieto?” I ask, and Giulia shakes her head.

“No, she moved to Rome for a bit in the late seventies, and by 1985, she was dead.” She taps her nose, mimes taking a big sniff. “Drugs.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, instantly wishing I hadn’t brought it up, but Giulia only shrugs again.

“I told you, it ruined her life. Took it in the end.”

Wagging one finger in my direction, Giulia narrows her eyes at me. “So, you leave all that alone,” she tells me. “It’s like a curse, that story.”

She’s joking, being playfully stern, but I think there’s something a little sincere behind it. And given that everyone involved in that summer is now dead, Elena included, I can’t really disagree with her.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing about it, though. Not with those ten thousand words sitting on my computer and my brain actually feeling like it’s firing on all cylinders for once.

The door from the back patio opens, and Chess comes in, her laptop tucked under her arm, a rose-gold Hydro Flask in her other hand. “What are you two gossiping about?” she asks, and Giulia laughs, gathering up her purse.

“She wanted to know all about the muuuuurder,” she replies, wiggling her fingers like claws, and Chess shoots me an indulgent look that makes my teeth itch.

“Are you still thinking about that?” she asks.

“I’m writing about it, actually,” I say. “Already have a couple of chapters.”

I don’t know why I tell her, and it’s not technically true, anyway—what I’ve got so far is mostly freeform, nothing organized into sections yet. But saying it out loud makes it feel real, and I want desperately for this to be real. An actual book, a thing I’ve made.

I see the way Chess takes that in, and I nod at her laptop.

“How’s your work coming?”

“Great!” she chirps, too fast and too bright.

Giulia looks between us for a second, and then offers her own too-bright smile.

“You should be set for the next few days, I think. Call me if you need anything else.”

We thank her, and then she’s gone, her little blue car traveling back down the hill, leaving me and Chess alone again.

Chess sits at the table across from me and unscrews the top of her flask. “So, tell me about it,” she says before taking a drink of water. “What you’re working on.”

I make myself lean back, casual, as I pull a section from the orange. “It’s kind of a mix of things. Little bit about the murder, little bit about Lilith Rising, little bit about me.”

Her eyebrows go up. “About you? So, it’s like a memoir?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then, what exactly?”

I laugh, but it sounds shrill. “I don’t know yet, Chess. It’s still in the early stages, but I’m having fun with it at least. And wasn’t that the point of this trip? To get some writing done?”

She acknowledges that with a nod, then folds her arms on the table, leaning in closer. “I’m just surprised, is all. I never thought you’d want to do nonfiction.”

Neither had I. I’ve always liked my stories fictional, preferred inventing characters and situations rather than just reporting them as they happened, but this was different. This felt like … unearthing something. Exorcising it, maybe.

Ooh, that was a good word for it, especially considering the subject matter of Lilith Rising. I should remember that, try to work it into the book.

My fingers were already itching to return to my laptop, brain whirring in that way that tells me I have an excellent few hours of writing ahead of me.

I get up from the table, but as I do, Chess stands, too. “God, do you remember when I took that fiction writing class with you junior year? What was that dickhead professor’s name?”

“Dr. Burke,” I say immediately, not adding that A, she wasn’t a dickhead, and B, I remember her name because she’s in the acknowledgments of the first Petal Bloom mystery. She was the first person who ever told me I might be able to make a living at writing, and it was her voice I heard in my head when I sat down and started that first book, An Evil Evening.