The Villa(50)

When the last note fades out, Mari realizes she’s crying, her own tears joining Lara’s on the sheet music.

“I wrote that after Billy,” Lara says quietly, and Mari closes her eyes because somehow, she’d already known that. The sadness weeping out of the song was familiar to her even without words.

“I miss him, too,” Lara says, and for the first time Mari lets herself remember the good parts of it all, before her son got sick. When he was a sweet, rosy-cheeked baby there in their little flat, and she can see Lara holding him, dancing around the kitchen with him in her arms, his little face alight with joy and with love.

Lara had loved him. Lara had lost him. All this time, she’s been reaching out to Pierce, waiting for him to join her in her grief instead of wishing it away.

She should’ve reached out to Lara, too, but her hurt and her anger was too raw. It was justified, and she can’t feel guilty about it, but even at nineteen, she’s learned the world isn’t as cut-and-dried as all of that.

Mari entwines her fingers with Lara’s and rests her head on her sister’s shoulder.

“You’re the one who should be making an album here,” Mari tells her, and then squeezes their joined hands. “You’re the one who’s going to write an album here. And I’m going to write my book, and by this time next year, I’ll be a famous author, and you’ll be a star. Bigger than Carly Simon. Bigger than Joni Mitchell. You watch.”

She thinks Lara is chuckling at first, amused by Mari’s grandiose plans, but then Lara sucks in a watery breath, and Mari realizes she’s crying again.

“What is it?” she asks, lifting her head to look at Lara.

And that’s when Lara gives another wrenching sob and says, “Mare. I’m pregnant.”

“It would’ve been better not to love him,” I tell her through my tears./

But my sister’s a plain-speaker, voicing all my fears./

“Not better. Just easier.”/

The simplest words I’ve ever heard./

And they cut me to the quick like only she can./

“Not better. Just easier.”/

A silk glove on an iron hand.

—“Night Owl,” Lara Larchmont, from Aestas, 1977





CHAPTER TEN





Mari’s papers are burning a hole under my mattress.

Since that afternoon three days ago, I’ve read them at least half a dozen times, hardly believing they’re real.

Or, I guess I should say, I’ve read most of them. I’ve held off on what appears to be the last chapter. I’d skimmed it, of course. That was the first thing I did when I’d realized what I’d found, desperate to read Mari’s version of Pierce’s murder.

But the pages end before that, stopping when Pierce is very much alive. I’d decided to save that last chapter, wanting to experience that summer with Mari, as she experienced it. Wanting to savor this treasure for as long as possible.

Because that’s what it feels like—an illicit treasure, hidden underneath my bed.

If I can prove that this is the definitive account of what happened the summer of 1974, as written by one of the main people involved, and that my original idea about Lilith Rising holding clues to the events of that summer was right …

It’ll be huge.

Which is why it’s vital that Chess doesn’t know what I’ve found.

But I think she’s beginning to suspect something.

We’ve gone back into Orvieto, craving an outing after several consecutive days holed up at the villa. The skies are cloudy today, making the walled city appear more foreboding than the first time we visited. In the heavy heat, the closeness of the buildings is less charming, the duomo more overwhelming.

I sip from one of the bottles of mineral water Chess brought for us as I pretend to gaze into shop windows, my brain a million miles away, back with Mari and Pierce and Noel.

“You have been a very busy bee this week,” Chess says, bumping my hip as I turn away from the window. Overhead, the hanging baskets of red flowers are very bright against all the gray.

“I feel like I’ve barely seen you, but I hear you, clickety-clicking all the time.”

I thought I was doing a better job of hiding how much I was working, but clearly not.

For a moment, I struggle with how to answer, and then the perfect excuse comes to me.

Making myself look as sheepish as I can, I say, “I’m actually back on Petal.”

Chess stops, her leather bag swinging on her shoulder. “Wait, seriously?”

I nod. “The book about Mari and the villa wasn’t really going anywhere, and then it occurred to me that just like I needed a change of scenery, maybe Petal did, too. So I threw out what I’d been working on before and started a whole new draft. Petal in Italy, solving the case of the poisoned cappuccino.”

“I love it,” Chess replies, squeezing my arm, and the obvious relief on her face tells me more than anything how pleased she is that I’ve put the villa project aside.

But why? Is it because nonfiction is supposed to be her thing, and she wanted me to stay out of her lane? Was she worried I might actually write something that eclipsed even the great Chess Chandler?

Or, I make myself consider as we walk farther down the street, maybe I was imagining all of this, assuming the worst about Chess. Maybe she is just genuinely happy I’m writing again, that I’ll be able to deliver the book that’s due and get the payment that I definitely need.