Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
It’s surreal that, just two weeks after that lunch in a little café in Asheville, North Carolina, I find myself in Rome.
The flight was uneventful, and I slept through most of it, so being flung into the chaos that is Fiumicino makes me feel like I didn’t just leave the country, but possibly the planet.
Chess is already at the house outside Orvieto, and she’s left me instructions for how to make my way there. I squint against the bright sun spilling in the windows at baggage claim as I review them on my phone. From the airport, a train to Termini, the station in the city center; from there, another train will take me to Orvieto, where, allegedly, Chess will be waiting for me.
I haven’t been overseas in nearly five years, and even then, I was always with Matt. This is my first time navigating a foreign country on my own, and the sense of pride I feel when I manage to get on the right train is probably way out of proportion, but I don’t care. For the first time in more than two years, I actually feel like myself again, the cobwebs clearing out, the sense that whatever has been weighing me down is finally lifted.
It’s about an hour from Rome to Orvieto, and even though I’m exhausted and the gentle rocking of the train should absolutely put me to sleep, I’m too excited, sitting with my face practically pressed against the window, watching urban sprawl bleed into countryside.
The station we pull into is much smaller than the one in Rome, and far above me, I can see the thick walls that surround the historic part of the city. It looks unbelievably ancient and solid, with only trees and the occasional rooftop visible from down below. I’ve read about Italy’s medieval hill towns, but this is my first time actually seeing one, and I feel tears spring to my eyes as I wrestle my suitcase off the train.
I’ve done it. After months of being trapped in my house, trapped in my own body, I am somewhere new, and the thrill of it races through my blood like champagne.
I’m even more excited—and relieved—when I see Chess waiting for me just outside the station.
Somehow, she seems to be even blonder than she was in Asheville, and I wonder if the next time I see her, she’ll be full platinum. But she’s smiling at me, her grin huge, her arms spread wide, and I let myself be swept into her embrace.
“You’re here!” she sings out, and then gestures at the car behind her.
It’s tiny and red, extremely Italian, and I laugh as I load my suitcase into the miniscule backseat.
“I cannot believe the great Chess Chandler is such a cliché,” I tell her, and she looks at me over the tops of her sunglasses, still smiling.
“Look, my best friend is in Italy with me for the summer. We are going to drive a fucking Fiat, wind in our hair, full Under the Tuscan Sun shit, bitch.”
That makes me laugh again, and then we’re in the car, and she’s right—this is exactly how you should do Italy.
The drive winds through the hills, taking us slightly away from Orvieto until we’re high enough that I can actually see over those massive walls into the old city itself.
“It’s amazing,” Chess tells me, following my gaze. “Like an actual fairy tale or something. We can go in this afternoon if you want.”
I might, or I might want to do absolutely nothing, and the freedom of that makes me almost giddy.
We drive underneath the bluest sky I’ve ever seen, past fields and trees, and then Chess turns down a dirt road, the Fiat bumping along in a way it’s probably very unused to. This is a car made for the tight streets of Rome, not a dusty track covered in pebbles and potholes, and I think how typically Chess this is, bending even cars to her will.
And then the house comes into view.
“Holy shit, Chess,” I murmur, my eyes going wide.
I’ve looked at photos of Villa Aestas about a hundred times in the past few days, but there’s seeing a picture, and then there’s seeing the real thing, rising above you like something out of a movie.
It’s every dream anyone could have of an Italian villa: a solid but graceful rectangle of butter-colored stone set on the greenest lawn, with bright flowers blooming in every window.
We pull into the curved gravel drive in front. Around the side of the house, I can see the shimmering aquamarine of the pool, and past that, the greener, murkier waters of the pond, lined by tall cypress trees offering pockets of shade at the water’s edge.
“It’s unreal, right?” she asks, pushing her sunglasses up to get a better look. “The website doesn’t do it justice.”
It really doesn’t. Because it’s not just the way the place looks. It’s how it feels.
Peaceful, like a private little universe, tucked away from the world.
I know immediately that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
It’s a feeling that gets even stronger when Chess opens the heavy oak front door, ushering me into a cool and dim foyer. The floors underfoot are stone, the walls painted the same warm yellow as the outside of the house, and just by the front door, there’s an old, scarred table with a vase of bright sunflowers.
“I picked these,” Chess tells me, reaching out to stroke the petals. “There’s a whole field of them right behind the house. It’s like they were determined to make this place as perfectly dreamy and Italian as they could.”
And they succeeded. This house doesn’t just live up to my fantasies—it exceeds them, wildly.
Another thing that is, I have to admit, perfectly Chess.
“Soooo?” she asks now, lacing her fingers together and lifting her hands under her chin.
“I can’t believe someone got murdered in this house,” I reply, and she laughs.
“All right, that’s your first mention of the murder, you only have four left.”
“I’ll save them,” I promise, because standing in this front hallway right now, light pouring in through an arched window at the top of the stairs, murder is the last thing I’m thinking about. Besides, Chess was right—it sounds like it was more of your typical drugs and rock ’n’ roll fiasco of the seventies, not exactly the kind of Gothic story that spooky legends are built around. A musician beaten to death by some lowlife, in an argument that got out of control because everyone involved was high out of their minds. And anyone who was there that night is long dead.
“Besides,” Chess adds now, guiding me farther into the house, “people get murdered in all kinds of houses, so why not gorgeous villas?”
She has a point, but it isn’t the elegance of the house that I was thinking about. It’s that this place exudes a warmth, a serenity that feels totally at odds with someone getting their brains bashed in.
But I don’t want to think about any of that right now.
Right now, I want a shower, a glass of wine, and at least two hours of sitting on that patio outside, thinking about absolutely nothing at all.
“Do you want the big tour?” Chess asks, sweeping a hand out in front of her.
I don’t, really. I think it might be fun to explore the house completely on my own, finding out its secrets and surprises for myself.
But I can tell that Chess has been looking forward to this, playing Lady of the Manor, so I smile. “Go for it.”
She claps her hands, then threads her arm through mine, pulling me along.
It’s smaller than I’d thought it would be, cozier. You hear “villa,” and you start thinking of some sprawling mansion with wings and secret passageways. But Villa Aestas is homier than that. There’s an appropriately grand staircase just past the front door, leading up to a landing with a hallway on either end, bedrooms branching off in both directions. There are at least four bedrooms that I see, and Chess leads me to one on the right, opening a door with a flourish.
“Obviously if you don’t like it, you can pick one of the others, but this room felt the most Em-ish to me,” she says. She’s leaning against the doorframe, smiling her Chess-iest smile, and, as always, she’s right.
This bedroom is small, but it faces the pond and the sloping back lawn, and in the distance, I can just make out the walls of Orvieto.
There’s a white desk under the window, and the bed is done up in shades of blue, calm against the white walls with their framed prints of bucolic Umbrian scenes. Lace-trimmed curtains float in the breeze. The room is perfect, down to the details, like it’s a movie set.
“Admit that I’m good,” Chess says, and I turn to her, my throat suddenly tight.
“You’re the best,” I reply, and I mean it. Not just because she’s invited me here, or because she picked out this lovely space for me, but because, for all the weirdness that’s happened between us over all the time I’ve known her, she really, truly is my best friend.
She hugs me again, her grip tight, and then pulls back. “You’re going to write so many brilliant words at that desk, I just know it.”
I give a slightly watery laugh, rubbing my nose. “You have more faith in me than I do.”
Chess shrugs, drifting back toward the door. “I always have.”