The Villa(47)

Chess is quiet, the only sound the twittering of birds and the wind through the trees for a few beats before she says, “You never really told me about all that. Matt cheating.”

“It’s not exactly my favorite subject,” I reply, but I wonder if it might feel good to actually talk about it.

“I never knew anything for sure,” I continue, my eyes still on the pond. “There wasn’t some big moment where I caught him in bed with someone, nothing that Lifetime movie. He just … started getting distant. And then his phone suddenly had a lock code on it, and … I don’t know. It’s like I could just sense someone else in the house, in our relationship, even when it was just the two of us.”

Those had been the worst days. Sick, my mind permanently fogged, certain there was another woman …

“Then I finally had the Love, Actually moment, and I knew,” I finish up, and Chess turns to face me, crossing her legs on the blanket.

“What does that mean?”

I laugh, even though the discovery was not remotely funny at the time. “Oh, you know. Found a piece of jewelry hidden away in his sock drawer. A bracelet. My birthday comes around, there’s a box, but it’s perfume, not a bracelet, and when I look again in his drawer, the bracelet is gone.”

“Oh fuck, Em.”

“Yup.”

A month ago, that memory would have lanced through me like a knife. Now it’s just a dull kind of ache, and I turn to face Chess.

“I was so mad at her, whoever she is, for so long. I kept conjuring up these imaginary women, or remembering some lady he worked with, even picturing the barista at the coffee shop he liked. But now I feel like I probably owe her a fruit basket, whoever she was.”

Chess shakes her head, sunlight glinting off her hair.

“Only you, Em,” she says. “Only you would say something like that.”

“I’m serious!” I insist. “If things hadn’t fallen apart with Matt, I wouldn’t be here now.”

I take her hand, squeezing it.

She squeezes back, then adds, “You also wouldn’t be a third of the way into a brand-new book that’s totally going to revitalize your career.”

I smile, but it’s tight and not exactly genuine. I’m willing to get over last night, but I still don’t like Chess bringing up the book, and I still wish she hadn’t read any of it.

“I don’t know about that,” I say now, settling back on the blanket. “I’m still not sure what it even is. Sometimes it feels like a memoir, sometimes it feels like a biography of Mari.” I shrug. “Maybe it’s just an experiment. Something I need to get out of my system.”

“No harm in that,” Chess says. And then she adds, “She actually came back here, you know.”

My head jerks around. “Mari?”

Chess nods. “You’re not the only one who knows how to google, Em. After I read your extremely very good pages and started thinking we could work on it together—which I totally get now is a no-go, don’t worry about it—I was curious.”

There’s a sour taste in my mouth, and my stomach knots thinking about Chess sitting there on the sofa, scrolling through articles about Mari. This is my thing, even though I know that sounds ridiculous. You can’t claim a person or a subject like that. I really should be flattered that my bestselling best friend is so interested in my work.

“When did Mari come back?” I ask, and Chess tilts her face toward the sky.

“In 1993.”

The year she died. Was that why she’d returned? For one final goodbye?

But why bother coming back to a place where something so terrible had happened to her?

Chess stretches out on the blanket, her hands behind her head. “Go on,” she says, indulgent. “I know you’re dying to run inside and get your research on.”

I am, but I make myself sit there for another ten minutes, sipping my water and eating cheese while Chess naps, and I don’t run back to the house.

I just walk very fast.

There’s not much online about Mari’s second visit to Villa Rosato, just a throwaway line in one article about the murder—yes, she came back here the summer before she died; no, she didn’t stay long, only for a week.

I close my laptop. Something tickles at the back of my brain, the same way it did that day in Orvieto with the well.

There’s a bit toward the end of Lilith Rising where Victoria hides her diary, right before she’s sent away, afraid it might be used against her.

I flip to that part of the book now.

There wasn’t much time, but Victoria knew she had to hide the diary. If she didn’t, if someone found it, it would damn her.

She knew she should burn it, but she couldn’t make herself destroy it. Instead, she tucked it away in a special spot.

Where even from far away, it would remain close to her.

That’s it. From there, Victoria is ushered away, and there’s no explicit reference to where she puts the diary, just that vague description that reads more like a riddle than anything else. How could it be close to her if she was far away?

But a thought occurs to me, electric enough that I jump to my feet.

It’s probably nothing, I keep telling myself as I walk upstairs. You’ve found connections between the book and the house, but that doesn’t mean everything is some kind of clue.