Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The book is almost done.

Somehow, after a year of hardly writing anything at all, I’ve written an entire draft in just a handful of weeks.

As I sit at the little desk where I now know Mari wrote Lilith Rising, I close my laptop, taking a deep breath. Outside, it’s another cloudy afternoon. Chess left earlier to go down to one of the shops in Orvieto, and the house feels very quiet.

I could probably push myself and finish the manuscript within the next couple of hours, but I’m not quite ready yet. I think I’m still waiting for Mari.

I’ve reread Lilith Rising all the way through again, certain that there must be another hint to discover, another clue in there about where the remainder of Mari’s pages might be. Because I am certain now that there are more. That fight with Pierce and Johnnie, Mari’s decision to stay at Villa Rosato—a decision which seals Pierce’s fate and hers—can’t be the note she decided to end on. She wrote about that night, I’m sure of it.

But what has me so convinced? A writerly intuition? Or something more?

I don’t believe in ghosts, but it’s not hard to feel Mari’s presence in this house, and there are times when I wonder if it’s her nudging me on.

There’s more. Find it.

Or maybe I’ve just spent too long going down all these rabbit holes, reading and rereading the same book, filling my head with murder and secrets, and now I’ve completely lost the plot.

Sighing, I drop my head into my hands.

I haven’t had another bout of sickness in a few days, and my brain has felt very clear as I’ve worked. But it’s always there, this threat that my body might betray me, attacking me like some kind of boogeyman, rendering me helpless.

That fear is what makes me think I should just go ahead and finish the manuscript while I can, get it done and off to Rose before I somehow lose myself again.

Speaking of Rose, I remember that I’ve been meaning to email her to ask about Matt and his lawyers. I’ve been putting it off, first because I didn’t feel well, and then because it had seemed silly. What was I supposed to say, “Hey, did you tell my soon-to-be-ex’s lawyers I was working on a new book?”

And I know I’m also putting it off because if I email Rose, it’ll mean there’s this part of me—albeit a little one—that didn’t really believe Chess when she said she hadn’t told Matt.

That she hadn’t talked to him at all.

But I know it’s going to bother me until I get it over with, so I quickly pull up my email and shoot a missive off to Rose. I keep it brief, breezy even, just checking in, legal stuff with the divorce, she understands, just checking what she told Matt’s lawyers about the new book.

I hit Send before I let myself overthink it, and then close my laptop harder than I need to.

On my desk, my phone beeps, and I glance down to see a text from Chess.

It’s a picture of a massive fish on ice, its glassy eyes staring out at the camera.

What if I brought this home for dinner?

Guilt sneaks into my chest, an ugly, oily feeling.

I don’t trust my best friend. That’s the truth of it, and I don’t know if it’s the house getting to me, if it’s Mari, if it’s just me, but there it is.

I type back, I’m actually on this very strict no sea monster diet, so pass.

Then the search continues.

Chess is determined to cook a big fancy dinner for some reason, wanting to buy all the ingredients herself rather than depending on Giulia. Personally, I think she’s using it as a way to avoid working. She hasn’t said anything, but I haven’t really seen her at her laptop all that often. Luckily, she seems to have believed my lie about working on the next Petal Bloom mystery, and the questions about Mari and the book have trickled off.

But that’s actually another reason to get this done quickly. Once it’s in Rose’s hands, I’ll feel better—safer.

I know it sounds paranoid, I know Chess is not actually out to steal this book from me, but I can’t shake the memory of her eyes glinting in the candlelight.

This really seems like one we should work on together.

Like she doesn’t already have enough. Like the book she’s currently not writing won’t sell tons of copies, even if it sucks.

She can’t have this,I think, surprised at how ferocious the thought is.

I’ve probably been spending too much time in Mari’s head, reading about how fiercely competitive she and Lara were, constantly locked in a struggle for the same man, for the same artistic recognition, for the same life in a lot of ways.

It’s true that I haven’t thought nearly as much about Lara as I have about Mari—choosing, I suppose, to be loyal to the woman I feel the most kinship with.

But now, as I sit here wondering where Mari’s last pages might be hidden, it occurs to me that perhaps I haven’t looked at Lara closely enough.

And with Chess out of the house for another hour at least, I could use this time to do a more thorough search of the place.

I start with the little bedroom Mari described as belonging to Lara. Chess has taken the bigger room, the one I think was probably Noel’s, so this bedroom is empty and neat, though faintly musty since it’s been closed up for our entire stay.

I search for loose floorboards, feel under the desk, under the mattress, but there’s nothing. I make my way downstairs, back to the sitting room at the front of the house.

Chess was right about there being several copies of Aestas around, and I check each one, feeling in the sleeves even though I know that’s stupid. All five of these albums have probably been taken in and out of their cases a hundred times over the years.

Mari would never have risked that. She hid that last section well on purpose.

I move into the main hallway, passing the dining room, and notice that Chess’s laptop is sitting on the dining-room table.

Open.

I stand there in the doorway, and for a second, I really do think about just walking away from it.

But there’s a darker voice inside. She read your shit without asking, why shouldn’t you read hers?

She probably has the screen locked. And even if she doesn’t, I’m not going to go searching through her stuff. At least when she’d read mine, I’d just foolishly left it up.

I stop.

Had I? She said that I had, and I’d been too freaked out and pissed off to really think carefully about it, because I did sometimes walk away from my computer without closing the document.

But then I think about that little icon on my desktop with “THEVILLABOOK.doc.” and how that might have acted like a siren song.

Chess’s computer isn’t locked, but she has her own icon calling to me. Not “SWIPERIGHT.doc” or anything that obvious, just “NewBookDraft2-July.”

I sit down.

I click.

Have you ever asked yourself, “Am I grabbing all there is in life?”

I let out a slow breath.

It’s her self-help book, no mention of Mari, the house, any of it.

God, I’m a psycho, creeping around on her laptop, thinking she was … well, I don’t even know what I’d thought. But this is clearly a Chess Book.

I scroll past her usual stuff—How often do you ask yourself if you’re reaching your highest potential?—and feel my shoulders unclench a little.

She hasn’t stolen my book. She isn’t telling my story.

I scroll further down. More New Age word salad.

Enlightened.

Powered Path.

Soul Cleanse.

I’m just about to scroll back up to the top when another word catches my eye.

Emma.

Not my name, obviously, but close enough that I pause.

And then I read.

It’s not much, just a couple of paragraphs, but as my eyes move over them, nausea and rage surge up from the pit of my stomach.

Of course, there are times in life when we step off the Powered Path, and find we can’t get ourselves back on. Settle in while I tell you a little story about a friend of mine. We’ll call her Emma. Emma was always the Smart One at school. Perfect family—you all know what a messmine was!—and she had gone on to an adult life that we’d say had allllllll the markers of success: A good career, a nice house, a loving husband. But what happened when Emma, who was so used to things going her way, lost two of those three things? She couldn’t handle it. Complete life meltdown.

That’s because Emma was neveractually on the Powered Path. She’d just accepted an illusory version of it, and when that failed her, she was totally adrift. If Emma had had to work for any of the things she’d attained, she would have had the Titanium Core we talked about in chapter four, butshe didn’t. That’s why you should never regret the hard work you do on yourselves! Otherwise, you can end up an Emma (repeat after me: Don’t. Be. An Emma).

Despite my anger, a horrified laugh bursts out from me at that last line.

Holy fuck, this bitch is going to sell T-shirts that say “Don’t Be an Emma.”

This is what Chess thinks of me, then. As a woman who never worked for anything and who, when things fell apart, fell apart with them. That’s all this vacation has been, probably, a chance to observe me in the wild, to get a few more anecdotes of Sad Sack Emily—sorry, Emma—for her fucking book.

I scroll down further, bizarrely, sickly hoping there’s more. I want to read all of it, to suck down every bit of poison, an impulse I barely understand, but can’t resist.

There’s nothing, though. Just white space. Then I get to the bottom of the page.

When most people think of Villa Rosato—if they think of it at all—they think about the murder of Pierce Sheldon in 1974.

In a way, it hurts more, but at the same time, an almost dizzying wave of relief sweeps through me. I was right. I’m not crazy. Oh, she was smart, hiding it inside this document, but I knew it, I fucking knew it, and the satisfaction may be bitter, but it’s still real.

I keep reading, my breathing loud in my ears. The first paragraph is just the basics, the story of the murder, who was there that summer, how they were all connected. It’s fairly boring, really, a dry recounting, followed by a series of bullet points with dates. There’s nothing coherent yet, nothing that actually feels like a book.

But I keep scrolling, and two paragraphs on the next page catch my eye.

The summer at Villa Rosato was supposed to relaunch Noel Gordon’s music career while bringing Pierce Sheldon along for the ride. The women who came with them were only there to look at them adoringly, tell them how talented they were, and provide the sex part of the “sex drugs and rock ’n’ roll” equation. The ever-powerful myth of the muse, right? But instead, it’s those women, Mari Godwick and Lara Larchmont, who left us with two truly iconic pieces of art. Is that tragic irony or poetic justice?

Maybe Lara Larchmont herself had the answer. If you’ve ever had a broken heart, you’ve listened toAestas, I’m sure! But look closely at the lyrics of the final track, “Sunset.” Boring title, killer song, and the last verse goes like this:

Your light has faded/but you still think that it shines

Your once-silver tongue/tangles over worn-out lines

You think the sun is rising/as it sinks closer to the sea

Boy, don’t you know? The brightest stars that lit your sky/were the ones you couldn’t see

How often are we bright stars in someone else’s sky, but they couldn’t find us with a fucking telescope, huh? And how do we not only find ourselves a new galaxy, but become supernovas?

It’s a different approach than I’ve taken. It’s definitely still a Chess Book, and I wonder if she just doesn’t know any other way to write after all this time.

But …

I missed that line in Aestas. I’ve been so focused on Mari and Lilith Rising that I hadn’t even thought to look more closely at Lara’s writing. But Chess had found this, a lyric clearly referencing Noel or Pierce or—most likely—both of them. What other connections were there between the album and what happened that summer?

Beyond that, the bigger idea that Chess has identified—it’s good. By zooming out to include Lara and Mari, Chess has hit on something I hadn’t been thinking about, how the muses became creators. I want to keep reading, no longer to satisfy some dark urge, but because I’m interested in where she’s going with this.

But the Word doc ends there.

Which just pisses me off even more.

I get up from the computer on shaky legs, turning away before I remember to scroll back to where she had been working in the document. I can be sneaky, too, I congratulate myself, even as I wander out of the dining room in a daze.

Chess thinks I’m a loser.

Chess is stealing my book idea.

But also … I really liked what I read.

I’m trembling as I walk upstairs, and when I pass one of the hallway mirrors, my face doesn’t even look like mine. My skin is pale except for two bright spots of color on my cheeks, and my eyes are shining, my lips pressed together in a tight line.

If I raised one hand and covered myself in blood, I’d look just like Victoria on the cover of Lilith Rising, and the image stays with me, intense, visceral.

And then, suddenly, I know where to find the rest of Mari’s pages.

MARI,1974—ORVIETO

After a brief reprieve, the rain has moved back in, but for once, Mari doesn’t mind.

She’s claimed this little spot of the bedroom to write, and write she does, sitting at the desk every day as downstairs, Pierce and Noel get into petty arguments about music that still isn’t written, Johnnie broods and strums his guitar, and Lara merely drifts through it all.

But Mari is with Victoria and Somerton house and Father Colin, and she can sense the final web drawing tighter and tighter.

She’s going to call it Lilith Rising, she’s decided, already imagining how the title might look on a book jacket. A tribute to her mother, yes, but also a fitting title for a book about women, power, betrayal.

Survival.

The only thing left is the bloody and cathartic climax, Victoria laying waste to all those who’ve wronged her. Mari can see it like a movie in her head, but she feels herself putting it off, almost like she’s not quite ready yet.

Rain patters against the window as she puts her pen down and stands, her hands pressed to her lower back. She’s getting thinner again, forgetting lunch, sometimes skipping dinner altogether, and her stomach growls now, reminding her that it’s been awhile since she’s eaten.

Mari hopes she can grab a quick sandwich and then get back to her desk without having to see anyone, but when she reaches the foyer, she’s startled to see Johnnie standing there.

He’s hovering, almost like he was waiting for her, and Mari smiles at him, a little bemused.

“Hiya, Johnnie,” she says, and he steps forward, jittery.

“I was hoping you might come down. I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“I’ve been working,” she tells him, gesturing vaguely upstairs, and he nods again, his movement a little too jerky.

This is the reason she’s been avoiding Johnnie for the past week or so. Lately, it seems that he’s always high, and Mari finds that both boring and annoying. She occasionally puts up with it from Pierce, but she won’t from anyone else, Johnnie included, and now she hopes she can just scoot past him, get her lunch, and get back to work.

But he’s blocking her path, his dark eyes pleading and liquid. “I’ve really missed you these past weeks,” he says, and it’s so plaintive that it touches her a little bit. She remembers that first day with him by the pond, when she’d thought how nice it was to have a boy with a crush on her.

“Johnnie,” she says, touching his arm. She means it as a gesture of affectionate friendship, but Johnnie clearly takes it for an opening.

He surges forward, and then his mouth is on hers.

It’s a clumsy kiss, more enthusiasm than technique, and Mari is so startled by it that, for the briefest moment, she allows it.

But the whole thing just feels awkward, like she’s kissing a little brother or something, and she pulls away, her hands coming to his rest on his cheeks.

“Johnnie,” she says, her voice soft, and she expects him to give her that wry smile, that almost sheepish shrug. Worth a try, he’ll say, and they’ll laugh it off. Maybe he’ll be a little embarrassed, but not actually regretful.

Mari can see it playing out all so clearly in her mind that she’s confused when Johnnie’s expression goes hard, his hands grabbing her wrists.

“Right,” he says, his lip curling. “Johnnie.”

There is an ugly kind of sneer in his voice, and Mari stares up at him as he pushes her away. “So, you’ll have it off with Noel, and you’ll end up marrying that prick Pierce even though he’s fucked your sister and drove his wife to suicide, but I’m just Johnnie, right? What was it Noel said? Ah, right. Bit of a spaniel.”

“That’s not—” she starts, but he shakes his head.

“Nah, don’t tell me that’s not what it is. I can fucking well see it, can’t I?”

He points viciously toward the front of the house where she assumes Pierce must be. “He treats you like shit, and you won’t have the guts to actually leave him because if you do that, you gotta admit that it was all for nothing, right? That you fucked over your family and his innocent wife, all for some piece of shit who wasn’t worth it.”

The words come out in an angry torrent, every one of them stinging, and Mari looks at this man she thought she liked, this man she thought she understood, and realizes he might as well be a stranger.

And the worst part of it is, she knows he’s right. Yes, he’s hurt and he’s being a massive wanker about all of it, but he isn’t actually wrong.

She has thrown in her entire lot with Pierce. There’s no coming back from it, the only way out is through. And, as much as she hates it—Christ, how she hates it sometimes—she does love him.

She always will.

There’s a sound from the kitchen, and Mari looks over to see Elena watching them. She’s pretending not to, her gaze immediately darting to the groceries she was unpacking, but her cheeks are red, and her hands are trembling.

Another story for the villagers, Mari guesses, about the decadent rock stars up on the hill.

“Johnnie,” she says now, lifting her hands toward him. “Please don’t be like this.”

He rubs a hand angrily over his mouth, walking away from her, then coming right back, his eyes wild, and Mari backs up a step.

Johnnie has always seemed sweet to her, charming and boyish, and she doesn’t know if it’s the drugs that have done this to him, but it occurs to her, almost wonderingly, that she’s actually afraid of him right now.

“I asked around about him. About your old man. Called some friends back home, and turns out one of them knew his wife.”

It’s the last thing she expected to hear, and she blinks. “Frances?”

He nods, and there’s that angry gesture again, his hand across his lips. “Yeah. My mate Tom. He went to school with Franny’s brother. Didn’t know her all that well, but said she was sweet. She loved her family, and she could have had a happy life. Except one night, she and a couple of her mates snuck off to London to see some singer.”

Mari’s stomach sinks. She knows this story. Pierce told her his version of it, how Franny had, for the first time in her life, lied to her parents to go to a club in Soho. How Pierce had been playing that night. How he’d spotted her in the front row wearing too much makeup and a dress that didn’t really fit since she’d had to borrow it from a friend and thought how pretty she’d looked.

How sad.

And even though she hadn’t wanted to, Mari had imagined it so many times, wondering if after the show, he’d held her face the way he’d held Mari’s.

How did I go so long without knowing you?

“Next thing you know, Franny isn’t back at school. Family’s frantic, calling everyone, but, sure enough, she’d run off with that prick. Married him in Scotland, and then he knocked her up. And what did he do the second he met someone else, huh? Took off, said that Franny was boring now, that he didn’t want to be married anymore, that he wanted to be free. That he wanted her to be free, too. And now I guess she is, ain’t she? All for some stupid cunt who never actually loved her, and she was just dumb enough to believe his shit.”

Mari shakes her head, but before she can say anything else, Pierce is suddenly there, his hands clenched into fists at his sides.

“What did you say about Franny?”

Johnnie whirls around, and Pierce comes into the hallway, his face a mask of fury Mari has never seen before.

“You heard me!” Johnny yells back. “Think you’re God’s bloody gift because you can play a fuckin’ guitar, but all you do is fuck shit up. You fucked up your wife’s life, you’re fucking up Mari’s and Lara’s, and you’re fucking up mine. Telling Noel I can’t play guitar on the album because it’ll be ‘out of place.’ Didn’t think I heard you, did you? Probably forgot I was even fucking here. But what kind of pretentious bullshit is that, huh?”

Johnnie swipes at his nose with one hand, practically vibrating as he stares down Pierce.

“Yeah, well, maybe I didn’t want some low-life dealer scum fucking up the vibe with his three shitty chords, ever think about that?” Pierce says, and Johnnie throws back his head, barking out a laugh.

“Rich coming from you, mate. At my door every day, asking if I’ve got more, but now I’m ‘low-life dealer scum’? Well, you still owe this lowlife ten quid, you dickhead. Or hell, maybe I’ll start giving it to you for free, hope you fucking top yourself. Say hi to the missus when you do, yeah?”

Pierce’s face is white now, and then he’s rushing at Johnnie, and Johnnie has his clenched fist raised, and Mari hears herself, shrill.

“Stop it! Both of you!”

Pierce grabs Johnnie’s shirt just as Johnnie’s fist connects with Pierce’s jaw, making a sick, fleshy sound that makes Mari’s stomach roll.

She can hear Elena in the kitchen, shrieking for Noel, and Lara comes down the stairs, still in her pajamas, her face pale.

“Mari, what—”

“Pierce, stop it!” Mari yells again, trying to grab his shoulder, but he spins around, hard, sending her tumbling to the floor. She hears Johnnie’s roar and another one of those dull thwacks, and then Noel—she’s never been so happy to see Noel Gordon—finally appears, dragging Johnnie away from Pierce with surprising strength.

“Get a fucking hold of yourselves, both of you!” he barks, none of his usual lazy charm now, just the innate sense of authority that comes from your family owning huge swathes of England.

Johnnie skids on the stone floor in his sneakers, and Pierce is on his knees, panting, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Both of them are glaring at each other, but they don’t make any moves in the other’s direction, and after a moment Noel lets go of Johnnie’s collar.

Pierce rises to his feet and makes for the stairs, swiping at the blood on his mouth. It leaves a crimson streak across his cheek, but he doesn’t seem to care, taking the stairs two at a time. “Fucking bullshit, man,” Mari hears him say. “Fucking sick of this place.”

“Then leave!” Noel shouts up after him, and Mari’s stomach clenches.

No.They can’t leave now. Not when she’s so near finishing the book. What if she leaves this house, and Victoria’s voice goes silent again?

She can’t let that happen, not now, not when she’s this close.

When she goes into the bedroom, she sees Pierce already angrily pulling things out of the wardrobe, slinging them onto the bed.

His head shoots up when he sees her, his blue eyes bloodshot. “Who the fuck does that arsehole think he is, talking about Franny?” he asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer. “Like he knows. Like any of them know. I loved that girl, okay? You think I wanted her to die? I just wanted her”—he slings another shirt onto the bed—“not to live the boring life her fucking parents wanted for her. She should’ve been able to do that without me, and it’s not my fault she couldn’t.”

Mari’s mouth is dry, her hands shaking, and she approaches Pierce slowly, resting her hands on his back. He’s burning up, his skin hot against her palms, and she thinks again of that long night, holding Billy against her.

“Calm down,” she tells Pierce now, but he shakes his head, pointing at the chest of drawers.

“Get your things. We’re not staying one more bloody night in this nuthouse.”

Mari’s eyes go to her notebook, still open on her desk. “Don’t be silly,” she tells Pierce, trying to keep her voice light. “We’re supposed to be here another two weeks. We can’t buy new tickets, we don’t have the money.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that,” Pierce replies, beginning to shove things into the suitcase, and Mari can’t help the scathing laugh that bursts out of her.

“Of course, you don’t, but you never do. I’m the one who has to worry about that kind of thing, right? Suppose you want me to call my father, beg him to help us out somehow.”

Pierce goes still, then turns around, his chest heaving. “I’ve never liked you having to ask your father for money—”

“But not enough to actually make money yourself. And god forbid Pierce Sheldon ever lowered himself to grovel to his own family.”

Pierce points at her, his hand shaking. “You just don’t wanna leave because of him.”

His hand moves, finger now jabbing at the floor, toward downstairs, and Mari picks up the nearest thing to hand, one of Pierce’s jackets, flinging it at him.

“Oh, that’s right, the only thing I could possibly care about is some other man and some other cock,” she spits out. She has no idea if he means Johnnie or Noel or both, and, given that the idea she’d want to stay for either of them is absurd, she’s too bloody angry to care. “What other reason could a girl have for not wanting to sprint out across Italy dead broke? Never mind that I’m actually happy here. Never mind that I’m actually working, not that you’ve even fucking noticed. Or asked. Or cared.”

Pierce just stands there, staring at her, his expression almost comically confused.

He looks like someone just hit him over the head, Mari thinks, and she sort of wishes she had.

“You’re really not leaving,” he says, and Mari folds her arms tight across her chest.

“I’m not. You can, but I won’t.”

Sitting heavily on the side of the bed, Pierce puts his head in his hands, sucking in a breath. When he finally looks back at her, there are tears in his eyes, but he’s trying to smile.

“Then I’ll stay, too,” Pierce proclaims, and somewhere in the universe, a pair of scissors snaps, sealing his fate.

In the end, it was the testimony of Elena Bianchi that doomed John Dorchester. The teenager had been a maid at Villa Rosato for the entire summer and, it turned out, had witnessed far more of the various tensions and dramas that were unfolding between the inhabitants than they realized. On the stand for a total of three days altogether, Elena’s testimony held the court—and the world—riveted. Thanks to her, it was revealed that not only had Noel Gordon impregnated Lara Larchmont, but that Lara had previously had a brief affair with the deceased, Pierce Sheldon. Elena also testified to drunken rages, petty arguments, and, most damning of all, a physical altercation between Johnnie and Pierce that had erupted after Elena saw Johnnie and Mari in a passionate embrace.

This, of course, led to the long-standing belief that everything that happened that summer was really all about sex. The rumors began at the trial, and really never stopped. Mari was having an affair with Johnnie; no, she was actually sleeping with Noel and Johnnie—or, even more scandalous, had Mari discovered that Pierce and Noel were sleeping together?

Perhaps, as Elena darkly implied before the opposing counsel could stop her, it was a more fluid situation, one involving bed swapping, partner swapping—a veritable orgy unfolding just outside the tranquil medieval hill town of Orvieto.

It was ironic that these five people, accustomed to being watched and scrutinized, seemed to have forgotten about the civilian in their midst, who was committing to memory all the private moments that eventually led to a brutal murder.

Elena enjoyed her brief moment of celebrity as well. She was able to parlay it into a brief modeling career and eventually married Giancarlo Ricci, the wealthy son of an Italian record executive before she sadly passed away in the mid-eighties.

It’s a great irony, no doubt, that in being a part of something so horrible, Elena Bianchi’s life was, indisputably, improved.

If she herself ever had any qualms about that, she never expressed them. If anything, she seemed to take the events of July 29, 1974, in her stride.

Interviewed a year after the trial, Elena was asked if she thought the courts got it right. Her answer was typically Italian: Errano tutti pazzi.

“They are all mad.”

—The Rock Star, the Writer, and the Murdered Musician: The Strange Saga of Villa Rosato, A. Burton, longformcrime.net

MARI,1974—ORVIETO

Mari doesn’t know it’s her last night at Villa Rosato on the July evening that she sits down at her desk to finish Lilith Rising. There’s no warning, no sense of foreboding in the air.

That last day has actually been one of the nicer ones that she’s spent at the villa. Noel has taken himself off to town, claiming he’s going to throw himself down St. Patrick’s Well. Given that he abandoned any pretense of disguise, Mari suspects he intends to put himself on display and be admired by the locals. Pierce spends most of the day writing in the drawing room downstairs. Lara is in her room, playing, and though Johnnie seems determined to get himself into the most altered state humanly possible, he’s at least peaceful, for once. No more dark glares at Pierce, no further arguments.

It’s a good day, all in all, and Mari will be glad for that, after.

It’s past midnight when the storm begins, and Mari is still at her desk, a candle burning next to her. She hears voices in the hallway, but she ignores them at first, determined to see her story through until the bloody end.

Victoria stared up at the house, and knew. All this time, she had thought it was Colin drawing her to the darkness, but the darkness had always been there, inside her. It’s why she loved the house, and the house loved her. It’s why she was here now: to bring about her own ruin, but also her own salvation.

She stepped forward, the grass—

“I get a say in this!”

Pierce’s shout rings out from somewhere downstairs, startling Mari, ripping her out of the world she’s creating and thrusting her right back into the one she lives in.

If he and Johnnie have started up again …

But it’s not Johnnie’s voice that replies.

“Pierce, you’re drunk,” Mari hears her stepsister say, her voice weary, and Mari goes still, waiting.

“You aren’t listening to me,” Pierce goes on. “You don’t understand that we could … we could all be happy, Lara. We were happy, right? Before we lost Billy.”

The mention of her son’s name has Mari rising from her desk, and when she walks halfway down the stairs, she sees Pierce and Lara are standing in the front hallway near the door. Lara was playing earlier, and her guitar is still loosely held by the neck in one hand, resting against her leg.

“Stop it,” Lara says to Pierce, “and go to bed. We can talk about this in the morning.”

Lara tries to move past him as a clap of thunder rattles the house, but Pierce grabs her shoulders, stopping her. The guitar falls to the floor with a surprisingly loud thwack, and Lara’s eyes go to it, but she doesn’t try to extricate herself from Pierce’s grip.

“D’you know I talked to Frances’s mum last night? She says she’s keeping Teddy. She says … she says they’ll go to the courts if they have to, and that my father—my own bloody father—will pay for it. Says that his grandson deserves a better life, a more ‘stable’ life, than the one I’ll give him.”

Mari hadn’t known this. Pierce has been subdued today, but she’d had no idea it was because Frances’s family had decided to take his son away from him.

But as she stands there watching Pierce sob, trying to coax Lara into keeping her unborn child, she can’t blame them.

They should hold him tight and keep him safe,she thinks. Safer than we kept Billy.

If they hadn’t been so poor, if Pierce had let her take him to a doctor …

“I’m sorry,” Lara says, reaching out and stroking Pierce’s hair. “I am. But you can’t replace Teddy with my baby. You can’t replace Billy with my baby.”

Mari moves closer, feeling a need to intervene, and then Pierce says, “But it could be my baby, too, Lara. And that fucking well counts for something.”

Time slows, and Mari sees Lara finally notice her over Pierce’s shoulder. The wretched look on Lara’s face says that it’s true.

Or at least, it could be true—and isn’t that just as bad?

Pierce follows Lara’s gaze and jerks his head around to see Mari standing there.

His face crumples and he lifts a hand to her. “Baby, come here.”

She thinks of that night, weeks ago: another storm, another offered hand, and how she’d thought that maybe she could live in Pierce’s world, after all.

But now she wants no part of it, wants no part of any of it, and she just shakes her head, a trembling palm pressed against her mouth, holding in a scream.

“You promised,” she finally manages to say, but it’s directed at Lara, not Pierce. “You promised, never again.”

“Mari,” Lara says, and there are tears running down her face, lightning flashing in the hallway window, making Mari wince.

“This can be okay,” Pierce is saying. “I can make this okay.”

He steps forward, lurches really, and Mari sees it happen like it’s in slow motion, his bare foot landing on the neck of Lara’s guitar, his toes curling slightly as he stumbles, and then there’s a horrible crack, wood snapping, splinters shockingly white against the dark wood. The strings give a protesting twang, but it’s too late, the thing is mangled.

Mari looks at Lara in horror.

She’s seen so many expressions cross her stepsister’s face, but this one is new. It’s not hurt, exactly. It’s deeper than that. It’s something animal, something primal, and all Mari can think about is Lara sitting in the parlor, Lara sitting by the pond, Lara on the edge of the tub, and how in every moment, that guitar has been a constant. Mari knows she hasn’t always loved Lara, but goddammit, Lara loved that guitar, and she was doing something with it.

Making something with it, something of value. Something for herself.

And now, like so many other of Lara’s dreams—and Mari’s dreams, too—it’s shattered under Pierce’s foot.

But still, Mari thinks she might be able to forgive him. It’s a stupid accident, after all, nothing Pierce meant to do. He’s drunk and tired, and they’re all upset, and Mari could absolve him the same way she’s absolved him for everything else.

And then he laughs.

It’s a shrill sound, high and grating, and Mari is moving before she knows it.

“Stop!” she hears herself yell as she runs down the stairs, her palms hitting him hard in the chest.

Harder than she’d meant to, but also not hard enough, not nearly hard enough for the rage in her heart in this moment.

He stumbles again, and his eyes meet hers, wide and confused as he falls back, and Mari will never forget the sound of his head hitting the stone floor, not as long as she lives.

It’s bad, she sees that immediately. Pierce lies there, dazed, his hand going to the back of his head instinctively, but then that same hand jerks like some invisible force has caught it, and those beautiful blue eyes roll back, his body convulsing.

“Oh god, oh god,” she hears Lara screaming, and Mari just wants it to stop, wants him to stop making those sounds, stop moving like that.…

There’s a sculpture on a pedestal by the front door. It’s heavy, solid stone, a naked and muscular man holding a harp, and Mari takes it in her hands now, feeling the weight of it, how almost impossibly heavy it seems.

But it’s not impossible after all.

She brings it down.

On the floor, Lara moans, but Mari can’t make herself stop.

She brings the statue down again and again, and she sees Frances, walking into that pond with stones in her pockets, and she sees her and Lara, locked forever in this sick triangle, and she sees Billy, trying to catch his breath and Pierce is saying, He’ll be all right, stop worrying, but he wasn’t all right, he would never be all right again, and nothing Pierce ever said came true.

Nothing he’d ever promised her had ever been real.

The statue cracks, but by then, Pierce isn’t moving anymore, and Mari is breathing so hard it sounds like she’s sobbing.

She is sobbing, she realizes, tears and blood mixing on her face.

Lara is still crouched on the floor, her face gray, her eyes wide, and when she looks up at Mari, there’s something like awe in her face.

“What do we do now?” she asks, and Mari is so, so glad she said, “we.”

They both remain there, and Mari thinks how quiet it is in the house. Noel is gone, of course, but Johnnie …

Where is Johnnie?

They find him passed out on the sofa, deep in a drugged stupor, and Mari understands how it has to happen now. Understands why Johnnie was here.

She’s inevitable,Pierce had thought in his dream, and she was.

So was this.

Once Johnnie has been smeared with Pierce’s blood, once she has smashed the statue into even more pieces and left them, bloody and broken at Johnnie’s feet, she and Lara go up the stairs.

Mari’s hand is still streaked with red, but Lara takes it anyway, the two of them silent as they make their way into the bathroom.

She turns on the tap in the bathtub, and Lara takes her dress, the black one with the red flowers on it, the one she’d bought the last time they were in Italy.

Pierce teased her that those flowers looked like splashes of blood, but he was wrong. She knows now because his blood is all over this dress, and it’s dark and thick and nothing like those bright red poppies at all.

Mari showers, making sure there’s not a single drop of blood left behind.

She’s not worried, oddly. She has Lara, and Lara has her. Johnnie and Pierce had fought just a few days before. Johnnie is passed out, Johnnie is covered in blood, Johnnie has the broken statue beside him.

Mari is going to get away with this, she knows.

What she doesn’t know, what she can’t know then, is that even if you’re never suspected, there’s no such thing as getting away with it.

Not really.

But that night, she puts on clean clothes, and she goes back into her room, and shuts the door. The rain gets louder, but Mari can’t hear it as inside Somerton House, Victoria wreaks her bloody revenge.

She finishes just as the sun rises. Outside her window, the first rays of the new day brighten the sky, chasing off the storm from the night before.

The End,Mari writes, and downstairs the front door opens, and after a moment, Noel begins to scream.