Chapter Four

CHAPTER FOUR

I end up getting that glass of wine and those hours to myself, sitting in a padded lounge chair on the patio, eventually drifting off, awakening to the sun setting and the mouthwatering smell of roast chicken, lemons, and garlic drifting from the open door to the kitchen.

I find Chess there, a dishcloth tucked into her belt as she stirs a pot on the stove, her own glass of wine in one hand. Her phone sits on the counter, and I hear music playing from hidden speakers somewhere in the house. It takes me a minute to pick out the tune, and when I do, I laugh, making her turn around.

“Are you seriously cooking and listening to Avril Lavigne?” I ask her, and she gestures at me with her spoon, dripping some kind of viscous sauce on the stovetop.

“I am listening to my incredibly special ‘Em and Chess BFFs Playlist,’ thank you very much.”

She nods at her phone, and I pick it up. Sure enough, she’s got a playlist pulled up called “JessieC+EmmyMac4Eva (1998–2018)” filled with songs that bring back an avalanche of memories from all the years we’ve known each other, from singing into hairbrushes in her bedroom to drunken karaoke the night before my wedding.

Even the title is nostalgic. “Jessie C” and “Emmy Mac” were old nicknames for each other. I stopped using hers because she never liked people referring to her as any normal offshoot of Jessica, and she’d stopped using mine once I’d become Emily Sheridan instead of Emily McCrae.

But it’s nice, seeing those old versions of ourselves side by side again.

Touched, I put the phone back down and push myself onto the counter, feet dangling as I watch her cook. “Why does it end in 2018?” I ask, and she turns, a wrinkle of confusion between her brows.

“Hmm?”

“The playlist,” I say. “It starts in 1998, which was the year we met, but it ends, like, five years ago.”

“Ah,” she says, turning back around. “I made it for our twentieth anniversary party.”

Now it’s my turn to be confused. “What twentieth anniversary party?”

“The one I was going to throw,” Chess replies as the music shifts into something from High School Musical. “It was going to be this huge thing, like a real anniversary party, but a friendship anniversary. I was gonna have it at my place in Kiawah, invite all our friends, family. Everybody.”

It sounds sweet, but also slightly unhinged, which is kind of Chess’s entire brand. “Why didn’t you do it?”

She turns back to me, placing the spoon in a little ceramic cradle on the counter and folding her arms. “Well, I got busy. That was the year The Powered Path came out in paperback, and suddenly everything went…”

She waves her hands around because is there any word that can sum up just how nuts things went with that book? Chess had been successful before that, of course. Things My Mama Never Taught Me had done really well, and The Powered Path hardcover had done even better, but the paperback had really skyrocketed.

That’s when Oprah had happened, and Chess had suddenly been on TV, in magazines, the kind of famous that meant people actually recognized her on the street.

“And then you were so busy,” she continues, then gives me a look out of the side of her eye. “Wasn’t that the year Matt started all the Baby Stuff?”

Ah, yes. The Baby Stuff.

That had come later, actually. It started Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when Matt got up at our family dinner, held my hand, and announced to everyone that we had decided to “start trying for a family.”

We’d talked about it hypothetically, not in a way that felt all that serious, and I certainly hadn’t wanted to announce it to anyone. I still remember sitting there, my hand sweaty against Matt’s palm, my face red as I thought, Do my parents really need to know that we’re about to start having a lot of sex?

But that was Matt. Very much a “state your intentions, follow through” kind of guy, and my parents had looked so genuinely happy about the idea, and it just felt easy to go along with it all, I guess. Like Chess, Matt was good at kind of sweeping you up in his plans while making you think it had been your idea all along.

I hadn’t known it then, but that was the beginning of the end. That Thanksgiving dinner with Matt shooting me a look for refilling my wineglass even though I definitely wasn’t pregnant yet, and my mom pulling up her Ancestry.com account to see what family names we might want to use, and my brothers joking about who would be the favorite uncle, and me thinking, This is great, this is what I want, I’m just out of sorts that he announced it so early, that’s all.

Now I shrug off Chess’s question, saying, “I also wrote two Petal books that year, so you’re right, it was a crazy time.”

Chess turns back to the stove, taking a sip of wine. “Anyway, the timing was bad, I guess. Plus, I brought up the idea to Matt, and he was, like, super weird about it. I think he felt like I was stepping on his toes or something? Like only he could have an anniversary with you?” She laughs then, her hair brushing her shoulders as she tips her head back. “Do you remember how mad he got at your reception when I joked that he was actually marrying both of us?”

He hadn’t actually been mad, just … irritated, I think. I can still remember how his smile had gone a little hard on his face, how I’d had this sudden knot in my stomach.

What will I do if they don’t like each other?I’d wondered when they’d first met. Things with me and Matt had moved pretty quickly, and he and Chess had only hung out a couple of times before the wedding.

But that had ended up being a pointless fear. Even though Chess can be a lot, Matt genuinely liked her. The three of us hanging out had never been awkward, and Matt good-naturedly accepted our in-jokes or references to some teen movie from 2002. Thinking about it now, I realize that I almost miss him.

What a fucking pathetic thought.

Matt is gone now, and Chess is here. I am here, and I hop off the counter, going to inspect the stove.

There’s the pot Chess was stirring, which I see now is gravy, and there’s another sauté pan of asparagus on the back burner. In the oven, I can see a chicken, skin brown and crispy, surrounded by piles of golden chunks of potato, and I straighten up, my eyebrows raised.

“You cooked?” Chess can cook, but I’ve never known her to actually enjoy doing so.

She screws up her face for a second, thinking, and then finally shakes her head. “I really, really want to lie to you and say yes, but actually, the girl who’ll be looking after us up here, Giulia, brought it all in. I’m not cooking so much as … warming.”

I smile, making my way to the blue enamel fridge, opening it to find yet another bottle of wine chilling inside. I top off both our glasses and say, “You know you just used the phrase, ‘the girl who’ll be looking after us,’ right? You know you’re now a person who says something like that?”

She rolls her eyes as she licks a spot of gravy off the side of her hand. “That’s what she is! She kind of … I don’t know, comes with the house. Does some light cleaning, brings meals, that kind of thing. Apparently, her family has been working here for generations.”

I take that in, gathering up a couple of plates from the cabinets and walking over to the pretty little kitchen table, draped in a floral tablecloth. “Do you think, like, her mom or her grandmother was here when—”

Chess lifts a finger. “Remember,” she warns me. “Only four more chances to mention it, do you really want to waste two in one day?”

I grin, shaking my head, and finish setting the table.

We feast on the asparagus, cooked with lemon and olive oil, and the chicken and potatoes, the gravy somehow rich and vibrant all at once, all of it washed down with cold glasses of the Orvieto wine the region is famous for. It’s sweeter than I normally drink, but it tastes like summer, and by the time I get up from the table, I’m fuller than I have been in ages, and also more than a little tipsy.

Chess is, too, giggling as she tucks a bottle of limoncello under one arm, two tiny glasses pinched between her fingers, and makes a sweeping gesture toward the door into the hallway.

“Come, let us retire to the drawing room,” she says, putting on an overly posh, old-world voice, and I follow behind her, trying not to bump into things. The sun has gone down, and while there are lamps on in the main sitting room we pass, the hall itself is shrouded in shadows.

Chess stops in front of a set of double doors, pushing them open with one elbow. I fumble for the light switch, but as she sets down the limoncello and the glasses, she makes a tsk-tsk noise at me.

“Uh-uh. Hold on.”

There’s the flick of a lighter, and suddenly a warm pool of light springs up from a tall chest of drawers just by the door. A fat candle in a metal holder splutters, and I watch as Chess goes around the room, lighting more candles. Two more thick pillars are on the mantel just over the fireplace, their light reflected in a gilded mirror, and then a few tea lights on the low table in front of the sofa.

Finally, for the pièce de résistance, she lights a massive candelabra, crystals dripping off of it, making a soft clinking sound as she hefts it on top of a long, low shelf.

I remember seeing this room during Chess’s grand tour, but in the afternoon light, it had been unremarkable—a smaller sitting room, slightly overstuffed with furniture, not as pretty as the main salon, its windows facing the front of the house rather than the prettier view out back.

But now, lit by flickering candlelight, the space is transformed. It feels intimate, but also glamorous, and more than a little mysterious. The rug underfoot is a little threadbare, the hardwood floors scuffed, but I like how worn in it feels. There’s something about the drooping sofa with its tasseled cushions, and the matching wingback chairs done in gold velvet, bald patches showing in spots. It feels like this room has seen some things.

“This,” Chess says, crossing over to another little cabinet, “is my favorite room in the house. It’s creepy, right?”

I laugh, sinking into one of the chairs, wiggling my toes against the rug. “Only you would be, like, ‘this is creepy, it’s my fave.’”

She throws a smile over her shoulder as she lifts the lid of a fairly decrepit-looking record player. “Fair, but you’re the one who writes murder books,” she reminds me. “So, I thought you’d appreciate an appropriately Gothic hangout on your first night.”

Once again, Chess gets me in a way that no one else does. I like that the house can have these different faces, cozy and soft in the day, a little spooky and grand at night.

Or maybe I’m just more drunk than I thought.

There’s a wooden crate next to the cabinet, and Chess riffles through it now, finally pulling out an album I can’t quite make out. Its cover looks green and faded in the dim light.

“This is very old school,” I tell her. “Very freshman year. You didn’t bring pot, did you?”

Chess snorts at that, taking the album from its sleeve. “I wish. The best I can offer is some CBD oil that tastes like lavender. I’m supposed to be trying it out for the store.”

“Store?”

She places the album on the turntable and lifts the arm. “Yeah, Team Chess is thinking of branching out with our retail arm. We sell the books and some merch on the website, but it might be nice to have little pop-up stores. Maybe eventually some permanent brick-and-mortar places, you know?”

I don’t know, and moments like this are a cold splash of water on my nostalgic musings about how close we are. Her life is so different than mine it’s like we’re practically different species at this point, but I nod anyway.

There’s a hiss as needle meets record, a pause, and then the opening notes of a song I vaguely recognize.

“What is this?” I ask, and Chess hands me the album cover.

There’s a woman on the front of it, sitting on a padded bench, a white guitar in her hands. She’s leaning over, turned a little to her right, and her dark curly hair almost obscures her face. Across the top of the cover is the word “Aestas,” written in a gentle, curling font.

“That’s why they call the place Villa Aestas now,” Chess tells me. “It used to be—”

“Villa Rosato,” I finish. “I saw that when I was googling.”

Chess takes the album cover back, tossing it to the nearby table. “Right. Anyway, Lara Larchmont apparently wrote a lot of this album here, so they decided to rename the villa in honor of it. Do you know that damn thing sold like twenty million copies? And it’s good,” she adds, gesturing back toward the record player, “but I’d make an actual deal with Satan to sell twenty million copies of anything.”

The song shifts into its chorus, and now I know the song. “Golden Chain.”

“My mom had this album,” I say, and I have an image of her humming in the kitchen as Lara Larchmont sang in the background.

“Everyone’s mom had this album,” Chess answers with a wave of one arm. “Even my mom, and you know she’s allergic to things like ‘art’ and ‘feelings.’”

I haven’t seen Chess’s mom, Nanci, in ages. I doubt Chess has either. They were never close—and, trust me, once Things My Mama Never Taught Me came out, any chance of them ever being close was shot to hell. But even when we were kids, Chess spent more time at my house than she did at her own. I’d never minded; growing up as the only girl in a house with three brothers meant I liked having someone around who was always on my side, someone to share secrets and whispers with.

And Chess seemed to thrive on the cheerful chaos of my house. It was just her and her mom in their duplex, and the few times I spent the night, I was always struck by how quiet it was, how Nanci would just disappear into her bedroom, leaving me and Chess with the run of the place.

It feels a little like one of those nights now, the two of us alone in this quiet house. But instead of the sad little duplex with its peeling linoleum and secondhand furniture, we’re in a villa, an Italian villa Chess was able to rent, because despite her kind of dysfunctional and sad childhood, she’s done … this. All of this.

Sometimes I forget just how impressive that is.

“I thought we should fully embrace the vibe, you know?” Chess says now, smiling in the candlelight. “Especially on the first night.”

Chess opens the limoncello, pouring the thick, sunny liquid into the tiny glasses and handing me one. I know I should probably pass—I’m already drunk—but when in Italy, right? So I tip it back, the liquor bright and almost painfully sweet.

Picking up her own glass, Chess flops on the floor, although “flop” isn’t an elegant enough word to describe how she folds up her long limbs, then stretches them out again, her cheek resting in her palm as she looks at me.

“You can talk about the murder thing if you want to,” she tells me. “I mean, I did bring in the album, it’s now fair game.”

I wave her off, my head swimming from the wine and jet lag still clouding the edges of my brain. “No. No murder talk in the creepy room.”

Chess lifts her glass in acknowledgment, then realizes it’s empty. Reaching for the limoncello, she glances over her shoulder at me.

“So, are you feeling any good writing vibes in the house? Any idea what you might want to dive into tomorrow?”

All I’m going to want to dive into tomorrow is the pool, probably. Instead, I say, “Not really sure yet. I mean, I need to finish the next Petal Bloom. I mean, I really need to finish it.”

“It’s pretty late, huh?” Chess asks. As a fellow writer, she gets exactly why the situation is so stressful—which is both a relief, and annoying. I bet Chess has never missed a deadline in her life. Plus, even if she did, it would be no big deal to her financially. But I actually need the money that comes along with delivering this manuscript, and I needed it basically yesterday.

When Matt decided to play hardball, I realized I needed an aggressive lawyer, and those, it turns out, are not nearly as cheap as Your Dad’s Friend Ben from the Golf Club.

“It is,” I say to Chess now, “but everyone understands. The divorce, being sick…” I trail off. I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth, that even if my editor and agent have been understanding, my checking account is less so. Chess resituates herself on the floor, her second shot of limoncello already gone.

“Do you remember that book we were going to write together? Back in college?”

It’s the first time she’s brought up the Book in ages, and I lean back in my chair, arms draped over the sides.

“Why didn’t we do that?” she continues, screwing up her face.

Because you flaked out,I think, but don’t say. Like you always do.

That isn’t fair, though. Chess’s flakiness is actually highly subjective. If it’s something she really cares about, like her own books, she’s as dedicated and focused as anyone could ever be. But with anything else, there’s a big chance she’ll just abandon it the second something newer and shinier catches her eye.

It took me a few years into our friendship to recognize the pattern. But when I was fifteen, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my mom, crying my eyes out because Chess was supposed to hang out with me on Halloween, and had instead ditched me to go to a party with her new boyfriend. It wasn’t the first time she’d done this kind of thing, and it wouldn’t be the last, but this was the first time I’d ever really, truly thought about ending our friendship.

My mom sat across from me, a mug of coffee at her elbow, and sighed, reaching over to take my hand.

“Baby,” she said, her Southern accent thick, “here’s the thing. This is who Jessica is. It’s who she’s always going to be. Now, you can either accept that or you can decide that this kind of thing is a deal breaker for you, but what you can’t do is keep getting upset over the same thing. She’s never gonna not do this kind of shit.”

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard my mom deliberately curse before, and that, more than anything else, told me how serious she was.

It had been easier after that, being friends with Chess, and as we sit in this beautiful candlelit room in this beautiful Italian villa, I’m very glad I didn’t write her off back then.

“We just got bored,” I tell Chess now. A half-truth, but it’s as good as any. “And it was college, you know? We had a million other distractions.”

“Maybe we should try again while we’re here,” Chess suggests, and I stare at her, trying to figure out if she’s serious.

“Given that I write cozy mysteries and you write self-help, I’m not really sure what that would look like,” I tell her. “‘Become your best self by committing some light murder in the apple orchard.’”

She laughs. “No, I mean we should resurrect the book we started writing back then. The novel about the girls at boarding school together.”

I pour another shot of limoncello so that I don’t have to answer right away.

“Think about it,” she says, warming to the idea. “It was one thing to write that story when we were teenage girls ourselves, but now? With life experience and shit? We could really do something there, Em.”

I think about those nights in Chess’s dorm room or the library at UNC, our heads together, each of us throwing out ideas that the other would immediately respond to. We were good at that kind of creative partnership, the whole “Yes, and!” thing, but hours of plotting and talking and gassing each other up didn’t actually result in a book.

Which was maybe for the best.

“Can we be honest and admit that the idea was kind of dumb?” I say, and she widens her eyes in mock outrage.

“Dumb? Dumb? Um, it had a brilliant title, if you’ll recall.”

I giggle. “Chess, you wanted to call it Green. Just that, nothing else. Green. As in ‘not easy being.’”

“Because of the double meaning!” she insists. “Their uniforms were green, and they were green in the … you know, metaphorical sense. Just starting out and all.”

I laugh even harder, nearly spilling my drink as I go to set it down.

“Can you seriously not hear how dumb that sounds?”

She pauses, pours another glass.

And then, with a nod of her head, gives in. “Okay, it was really dumb. But!” She reaches out and slaps my knee. “The idea of us writing something together while we’re here isn’t. So, think about it, Em. Promise?”

I know better than to get my hopes up even if the idea of working on something that isn’t Petal Bloom sends little fizzy sparks of excitement racing through me along with all that alcohol. In the morning, Chess will forget we even had this conversation, or she’ll get absorbed in whatever “Girl, Straighten Your Hair!”–type manifesto she needs to write next, but for now, in this perfect little room, I give in.

“Promise.”

Sun rising over the water/clouds floating so high

A place where I can settle/a home without goodbye

Have I searched for this too long?/Have I finally lost my way?

Or is this the beginning/of a new and brighter day?

“Dawn,”Lara Larchmont, from the album Aestas (1977)

MARI, 1974—ORVIETO

It’s strange, the three of them once again driving through the Italian countryside.

They have a nicer car this time, courtesy of Noel Gordon, who sent Pierce some cash before they left. Apparently, Lara hadn’t been exaggerating when she said that Noel was interested in Pierce and his music, and the letters he and Pierce had sent back and forth had quickly been full of the kind of easy affection and camaraderie that usually characterizes old friends.

Not only that, Noel had told Pierce that he had some studio time already booked in London once the summer was over. He had an album that was massively overdue, and the trip to Italy was something of a last-ditch effort to get some songs ready.

That had made something in Mari’s chest feel less tight about the entire endeavor. The fact that there was a goal in place, not just an endless stream of parties—plus, a real chance for Pierce to break through to a new level at Noel’s side. Now, as she sits in the passenger seat, the warm breeze blowing in through the window, Mari tilts her head back to gaze up at the sky and breathes in deep.

It’s a bright, cloudless blue that feels uniquely Italian, and the sun is already turning the skin of her forearm a slight peach, bringing up freckles that Pierce will later trace with one delicate finger, telling her she has constellations written on her.

Mari pulls her arm back in from the window, twisting around in her seat to look at Lara.

She’d fallen asleep earlier, but she’s awake now, her dark eyes wide, taking everything in.

Mari remembers that from their last trip, too. Lara always seemed to be watching, waiting, afraid to miss one single second, and now, as they begin climbing the steep road up to Orvieto, she leans forward, as excited as a little kid.

“Look at it!” she breathes, fingers clutching the back of Mari’s seat.

The town is worthy of the reaction. Set high on a hill, Orvieto is surrounded by a massive wall and in the city center itself, there’s a cathedral, its spires reaching into all that blue.

Mari wonders if they’ll be able to see it from the house.

Pierce lays a hand on her knee, shaking her leg. “Happy, darling?” he asks, looking over at her, and Mari smiles back, nodding.

She is, actually. Happy.

For the first time in ages.

Pierce leans out the window, the wind ruffling his curly brown hair as he smacks his hand against the side of the car. “My girl is happy, Italy!” he yells, and Mari laughs, tugging him back into the car.

“The villagers are going to come after you with pitchforks now, you nutter,” she tells him, and he gives an easy shrug, his blue eyes bright.

“Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Pierce actually does seem to thrive on people’s dirty looks, on whispers behind hands, Mari thinks. It cements his idea of himself as a rebel, the iconoclast who turned his back on his conservative family for a life of adventure and music and art. His blood isn’t quite as blue as Noel’s, his defection not quite as shocking, but there’s still money there, a baronet in the family tree, and a big Georgian mansion in the countryside. All of it, Pierce has told her, is deeply boring and stultifying, a life he couldn’t imagine leading.

His willingness to go his own way had seemed so brave when he’d first told her about his family. But sometimes, Mari thinks about his parents, how Pierce is their only child, and what it must feel like to be so thoroughly, irrevocably left behind.

The car follows a long dusty road through the hills, finally turning onto an even narrower dirt track, and finally, the villa comes into view.

“Oh my fucking god,” Lara murmurs from the backseat, and Mari blinks, equally stunned.

It’s … perfect. Even lovelier than she’d let herself imagine. Warm and yellow in the sunlight, surrounded by green and flowers, a jewel box of a house tucked into a lush, beautiful setting. As Mari gets out of the car, it’s all she can do not to jump up and down like a little kid.

Lara doesn’t hold back, though, grabbing Mari’s arm and doing just that, her curls bouncing as she says, “It’s perfect! Oh, Mari, isn’t it perfect?”

But then the front door opens, and Mari turns toward it, shading her eyes with her hands as Noel Gordon strolls out onto the lawn.

It’s surreal, watching a man whose face she’s seen on posters, in newspapers, smirking out from album covers at the record store, from the wall of her own childhood bedroom, walk toward her, his arms open, his smile wide.

He is both everything she imagined and nothing she expected, all at once.

Noel wears an old-fashioned velvet dressing gown over a pair of black jeans, no shoes, the sides of that ridiculous robe flapping open to reveal his bare chest. His hair is dark, curling over one brow in a way that has to be purposeful, and as he gets closer, Mari can see that he limps slightly.

She remembers reading about that now, some accident when he was young, but it doesn’t slow him down. If anything, it just adds to the weird halo of glamour that seems to surround him.

“So, you’ve found me, Sheldon,” he calls to Pierce, who rushes forward. Mari thinks he’ll envelop the other man in a hug—Pierce has always been very easy with his affection—but he catches himself at the last moment, instead grabbing Noel’s hand and pumping away in the world’s most enthusiastic handshake.

“This place is unreal, mate,” he says to Noel. “Thank you for letting us bum around it with you.”

Noel smiles, waving his free hand. “Been bored off my tits out here on my own. Needed some fresh blood.”

He looks at Mari then, and she can already see it, that assessment she gets from so many people. They look at her, and they see how much she resembles her mother, how she has her father’s red hair. And sometimes, she thinks, they look at her and wonder what it is about her that made Pierce leave his wife and family behind.

Then his eyes slide over to Lara.

Even though Noel Gordon is a stranger, Mari feels a strange kinship for him in that moment because his expression says exactly what he’s thinking. A sentiment she’s felt herself.

Ah, yes. You’re here.

How many times has she had that sinking sensation in her chest, coming home from a café or food shopping, only to find Lara perched on the sofa next to Pierce, her chin in her hand, a sly smile playing across her face?

Too many.

And now, here is someone who finally understands what it’s like to wish Lara were anywhere else, and even though Mari knows she should feel a sense of outrage—or at the very least, some sympathy for her obviously besotted stepsister—she just feels a kind of fierce gladness.

It’s not just her. She’s not just jealous or small-minded or, god forbid, bourgeois as Pierce sometimes likes to accuse her of being.

“And I see Miss Janet has made the trip safely,” Noel says, his smile twisting a little, and at her side, Mari feels Lara pause.

Janet is Lara’s real name, a name she hasn’t used in several years, deciding at fifteen to rechristen herself “Lara,” after a summer obsession with Doctor Zhivago.

And,Lara had reasoned, lying on her stomach on Mari’s bed, stockinged feet kicking in the air, it sounds better with Larchmont. Lara Larchmont. It’ll look so good on posters, don’t you think?

Mari hadn’t asked what kinds of posters Lara planned on gracing—that changed frequently. Actress, singer, model … whatever Lara had decided was the most glamorous identity that week.

Now her stepsister shakes a finger at Noel, her smile bright even as Mari sees the uncertainty in her eyes. “Naughty Noel,” she says. “You know I hate that nickname.”

“Not so much a nickname as your actual name, but why quibble?” Noel replies, throwing his hands wide, and Lara laughs.

Mari does, too, even though she’s not sure why.

“This is my sister,” Lara says, all jittery energy as she bops up behind Mari, wrapping her arms around Mari’s waist in a way she has never once done before.

“Stepsister, isn’t it?” Noel counters, smiling a little at Mari, who stands there frozen between Lara and her lover.

“Oh fine, get technical,” Lara says. Her voice has changed in that way it does, her accent becoming posher, her vowels more rounded. She lets go of Mari, stepping around to stand next to her. Pushing herself up on the balls of her feet, she grins at Noel and adds in a fake whisper, “You’ll probably end up falling in love with her.”

“Lara,” Mari mutters, her face going hot. Lara gets like this when she’s feeling insecure, pushing herself to higher and higher levels of outrageousness. Mari may be used to it, but she doesn’t want it here, not in this lovely space where she had hoped to free herself of all this bullshit.

Noel only laughs. “She has enough to deal with in one musician, wouldn’t you say, Mari?”

He turns his attention to Pierce, still standing there with his hands clasped in front of him, his face glowing. “Hope you’ve brought some songs with you, my friend. My well feels quite tapped at the moment, so I’d like to actually hear someone else’s music instead of my own insufferable shite.”

Pierce nods quickly, his hair falling into his eyes as he steps forward. “Fuck yeah, man, I got a ton of stuff I can play for you. And, like, maybe you could add to it or something?”

“Collaborate?” Noel asks, raising his eyebrows, and before Pierce can answer, Mari interjects, “His stuff is amazing. Musically speaking. Your lyrics might be a little tighter, but what Pierce can do with a guitar…”

Noel swings his head to look at her. Like Pierce, he has blue eyes, but his are darker, and Mari can see that they’re bloodshot, violet circles underneath.

Stepping forward, Pierce raises his hands. “Oh, I don’t know about all that. I mean, she’s my old lady, you know, she’s gotta say that stuff.”

He grins at Noel, and Mari is about to argue, but then Lara is there again, having pulled her own guitar case out of the car.

“I have some songs, too, Noel,” she tells him. “I’ve been writing, like you suggested, and I really think—”

“Lara, you barely play, babe,” Pierce cuts her off with a laugh, and even Mari can’t feel too sorry for Lara right now. The guitar is merely the latest hobby Lara had picked up, and it’s true, she seemed to spend more time picking out which guitar to buy than she actually spent using it.

“I’ve been playing for nearly a year now. I’ve taken lessons and everything,” she insists, which is news to Mari. The only lessons she’s ever known Lara to take were the same wretched piano lessons Mari’s stepmother forced them both to take, and Lara managed to wheedle out of those months before Mari did.

Noel ignores Lara, and turns back toward the house.

“Johnnie!” he yells. “Stop being awkward and come say hello to our guests!”

Mari had thought Noel was here alone, was fairly certain he’d just said he was by himself, but sure enough, another man comes out the front door, squinting a little in the sunlight, running a hand over his shaggy black hair.

He’s actually dressed, wearing a faded T-shirt and jeans, a pair of battered moccasins on his feet, and as he approaches, Mari notices that he’s taller than Noel, and possibly even more handsome.

“Johnnie here,” Noel says, slapping the man on the back, “will be serving as our entertainment director, as it were.” He smirks a little and Mari wonders what he means even as Johnnie shrugs, giving a sheepish smile.

“Hi,” he says, offering his hand first to Mari, which she likes. It was all beginning to feel a little Boys Club to her, what with Noel and Pierce immediately attempting to impress each other.

“Hullo. I’m Mari,” she says, and he smiles, revealing a slightly crooked front tooth. Mari likes that tooth, too, likes that it breaks up the otherwise symmetrical perfection of Johnnie’s face.

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,” Noel sings to himself, and then he surprises her by suddenly putting an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“Like I said, I’ve needed fresh blood around here.” The smile he gives her seems genuine, and Mari once again tries to wrap her mind around the idea that the voice that sang “Autumn Sun” resides in the throat just inches from her face right now.

Then he reaches out his other arm, embracing Pierce as well, pulling both of them toward the house as Lara and Johnnie trail behind.

“Come, my new compatriots!” Noel nearly shouts. “Welcome to Villa Rosato, and the beginning of it all!”

Mari rolls her eyes, but when she glances at Pierce across Noel’s body, he’s got the look of someone experiencing religious ecstasy.

This place will be good for him,Mari thinks. Noel will make him focus on actually producing something. She looks up at the villa, the windows winking in the sunlight. And it’ll be good for me, too.

Later, she’ll look back at this moment and wonder why there was no warning, no sense of the horrors that would unfold in that house.

But on that bright June afternoon in 1974, Mari just basks in the promise that here, in this beautiful place, things might finally be different.

Victoria hadn’t actually wanted to come to Surrey.

She’d liked their house in London. There was smog, yes, but she even liked that. And she enjoyed the bustle of city life. It made her feel like she was part of something, a single cell in a bigger organism.

In the country, she worried that she might feel her solitude more. Under skies so wide, so clear of anything save clouds, it might be easier to remember that, in fact, she was quite alone. Even within her own family.

It had always been that way.

But as she got out of the car on that bright summer morning and faced Somerton House for the first time, she felt her spirits lift. On a rainy, cold day, the kind that characterized English autumns and winters, she might not have been so enthused.

The house was old, for one thing. Her stepfather had said that the original bits—a kitchen no one used, one of the outbuildings—dated from the 1300s. The rest of the house had grown up around those parts like a snail’s shell, curling around itself.

A main staircase built in 1508.

Drawing rooms from the 1700s.

A series of turrets and fanciful stonework added sometime in the early reign of the queen Victoria for which the style had been named.

It was a dark house, a place that seemed not to sit upon a hill so much as crouch on it, but Victoria loved it all the same, from the moment she emerged from the backseat of her mother’s Renault.

Tall grass scratched against her calves. There had been a gravel drive once. She could still make out the pebbles and akind of rough, semicircular shape. But nature had taken it back over the years, and that was another thing Victoria loved about Somerton House. It was wild.

“Lord, it’s ghastly,” her mother said, tilting her head back to look up at the place, and Victoria made a sharp tsk-tsk sound.

“Mama,” she chided. “You’ll hurt its feelings.”

Her mother only shook her head, an indulgent smile crinkling her eyes. “You are an odd girl, my Vicky.”

She hated that name and had chosen the much more sophisticated “Victoria” three years ago, when she turned thirteen, but she didn’t want to start another argument, not today.

Instead, she ran ahead of her mother and her stepfather, who was just now getting out from behind the wheel of the car. He hated the Renault, probably because it had belonged to Victoria’s father, and he hated most everything that had ever been Frank Stuart’s.

Including Victoria herself.

“Slow down,” he called to her, but she didn’t listen.

The steps leading up to the grand front door were wide, covered in patches of green and gray, and she made a game of skipping over them, her sneakers slapping on the stone.

And then the front door was before her.

Scarred and looking older than the stone that surrounded it, the massive oak entrance had a lion’s head for a knocker, and wide knobs made of a dark metal.

If only, she will think a thousand times after. If only we had never come here, if only we had stayed in London, if only I had never walked through that door …

But ifs are pointless.

She did come there, they had not stayed in London.

She had walked through that door.

—Lilith Rising, Mari Godwick, 1976