Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

I wake up the next morning with the mother of all headaches, just like I’d feared.

The wine that had tasted like peaches and honey on my tongue last night tastes like furry garbage this morning, and I wince as I get out of bed. I’d stumbled up here sometime way past midnight, drunk and giddy and too exhausted to even appreciate how comfortable the bed was, how the sheets smelled like flowers and sunshine. I vow to myself that it was just a First Night Celebration thing, and I’ll be more careful with the wine—and the limoncello—for the rest of the trip. I mean, I just got back to feeling relatively normal, the last thing I want is to wake up like this every morning.

The hottest shower in the world and some very intense teeth-brushing helps get rid of the worst hangover symptoms, and by the time I’m dressed and heading downstairs in search of coffee, I feel slightly more human again.

“Chess?” I call out, keeping my voice pitched fairly low in case she’s still sleeping it off. But the rooms downstairs are quiet, and when I make my way into the kitchen, I see that it’s already almost noon.

Thankfully, the house comes equipped with one of those fancy pod coffee machines, and I make myself a cup, drifting over to the kitchen table where I see there’s a note from Chess scrawled on a pink legal pad.

Going to run some errands and try to get whatever fucking goblin is currently hammering inside my brain out of there. Giulia left sandwich stuff in the fridge XOXO Infinity!

I’m still not quite up to Sandwich Level, so I take my coffee into the back sitting room. It’s a bit more modern than where we hung out last night, the floors shining, the sofa a little newer, and I sit down with a grateful sigh, propping my bare feet on the coffee table.

I tilt my head back as a soft breeze blows in through the open French doors. I should probably open my laptop today, give Petal and Dex at least an hour of my time, but for now, I’m happy to just sit in the quiet.

My phone beeps in my pocket.

Well, the relative quiet.

I pull out my cell to see that I have a missed call and two text messages.

All are from Matt.

I frown.

We’re not technically divorced yet, but since he moved out, we’ve really only communicated through lawyers. The idea of trying to make small talk with a man I once thought was going to be the father of my children is too depressing, so I’ve been happy—well, not exactly happy, but resigned—to simply close down the lines of communication.

And now, just as I’m settling into what is supposed to be a relaxing, rejuvenating getaway, here he is.

I have no intention of calling back, but I do read the texts.

Just checking to make sure you got there okay.

How the fuck does he even know I’m away?

But then I remember. The night before I left, I posted on Instagram. Just an old shot of me and Chess back in high school, our arms around each other, cheeks pressed together, smiles wide.

“Off to Italy for a *whole summer* with this one! Here’s to over two decades of friendship and all the pasta we can eat.”

It had gotten the usual comments: “Italia! Have fun!” “Is Dex coming back in Book 10?????” “If Dex isn’t back, WE RIOT,” and a new addition, “Holy shit u know Chess Chandler??”

But now, when I open the app, I see there’s a new comment. Matt’s profile picture (updated from the shot of us walking down the aisle at our wedding to him gazing off toward a sunset, aviators shading his eyes) appears next to the words: “Hope you and your ‘bestie’ enjoy yourselves.”

It’s the first time he’s commented on any post of mine in over a year. Honestly, even before the separation, Matt wasn’t big on providing social media validation. Not that this is all that validating. I don’t know if those quotation marks are meant to be sarcastic or if he’s just making sure no one would ever think he’d use the word “bestie” unironically.

I delete the comment, but decide to answer his text.

I did.

He’s not getting a “thanks!” from me or even an emoji.

My phone pings again almost immediately, and I glance down.

Guess you must have finally turned in the next Petal book.

Ah. Of course. This isn’t about checking in on me, this is about checking in on my money.

My throat goes tight, angry tears stinging my eyes, and I can’t believe that I’ve only been here twenty-four hours, and he’s already ruining this for me.

Chess is paying, I type, and then delete it. Why the fuck should I give any kind of answer, any kind of excuse?

As I stand there, wondering if I should reply at all, another text pops up.

I’m not being an asshole. I’m just glad you’re working.

Right, because if I’m working, he’s getting paid.

Except you ARE an asshole,I type back.

An asshole who left his sick wife saying, “This whole thing is just more than I bargained for, Emily.” An asshole who posts pictures of yourself shirtless at the beach in your new town, just in case people weren’t getting the message that you’d finally ditched me and were officially single while also trying to own something I spent *years* making. You. Are. An. Asshole. TRUST ME.

I stare at the wall of text I’ve typed, and my heartbeat speeds up at the thought of pressing Send. I imagine those words zinging their way across the ocean, punching him right in his smug face as he lies in his bed in Myrtle Beach.

It would feel good, I know. Really good. Fucking great actually.

But no. I’m in Italy. Matt’s not.

And Matt doesn’t get to be in Italy, not even if he’s only in my head.

I delete everything I typed, and, after a pause, I go ahead and delete his messages.

There.

But I still feel unsettled.

Suddenly, I remember that when Chess was giving her big tour, she’d nodded to one of the bedrooms. “They’re using that as kind of a library, I think. Tons of books in there.”

That’s what I’ll do. I’ll find something to read, then change into my swimsuit and spend the rest of the day lounging by the pool, while Matt has to go to his stupid office and do boring accountant shit.

The thought immediately makes me more cheerful, and I practically bound up the stairs until I reach the door Chess pointed out.

It’s still technically a bedroom—there’s a narrow twin bed, shoved up against one wall, with a lace bedspread that’s not quite as nice as the other bedding in the house.

Bookshelves haphazardly line the other long wall. They look like an assortment of flea market finds or estate sale treasures, and while the effect might be disordered and sloppy elsewhere, like most things at Villa Aestas, it somehow comes across as homey and comfortable.

I’ve never been able to resist a bookcase in a rental house—I used to tell Matt that you could always tell who were the real readers, and who were the people who just thought of books as another form of décor, filling the shelves of their beach house or their mountain cabin with curated hardcovers.

And then there are bookcases like this, stuffed with paperbacks left behind by various travelers over the years.

I crouch down, my eyes scanning the titles. There are several books in Italian, some I’ve never heard of, some translations of big English language best sellers, at least half a dozen guidebooks, one with brightly colored Post-it Notes sticking out from half the pages. I spot a couple of thicker books about art history, and then a whole row of Henry James novels.

I’m just reaching for The Portrait of a Lady when something else catches my eye.

The spine is so warped, I can barely make out the title, white creases scarring the dark purple, the shiny foil letters dulled with age and use, but the curlicue “L” is unmissable.

Lilith Rising.

I pull the book out from the shelf, surprised at just how thin it is, and study the cover.

It’s your typical seventies trash, all that deep purple, the silver foil, the haunted and overly large eyes of the girl with the long, straight blond hair, one bloody hand raised like she’s reaching out to the reader.

The pages are yellowed and curling slightly around the edges, and I imagine how many times this book has been read in this house. Maybe out by the pool, the spine cracked and folded around so that the reader can hold it in one hand, chlorine and rosé eventually dotting the pages.

I turn the book over, my eyes drifting over the cover copy, every bit as purple as the cover itself, zeroing in on the tiny little bio of Mari Godwick at the bottom.

Born in England, Mari Godwick lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.Lilith Rising is her first novel.

That’s it.

No mention of her famous parents or her famous stepsister or her famously dead boyfriend.

No picture, either, and I reach for my phone.

There aren’t that many photos of her online, and the most prevalent one seems to have accompanied her obituary, a simple and serious shot of a delicate-looking woman in her late forties with reddish hair pulled back from her face, her eyes dark, her lips pressed together in something that isn’t quite a smile.

Scrolling down further, I finally find what I’m looking for, a picture of Mari when she was nineteen. The summer she stayed here.

The photograph is black and white. She’s standing outside what looks to be an Italian courthouse, her small, pale face set off by a high-necked black dress and a huge pair of Jackie O–style sunglasses. Her head is down, one arm raised toward the camera, a desperate attempt to block the flash. It’s a surprisingly eerie echo of the cover of Lilith Rising, that hand reaching out, covered in blood.

“Ooh, are we snooping?”

I look up, startled, to see Chess in the doorway. She’s wearing leggings and a sports bra, her hair pulled back from her face in a sweaty ponytail. She must’ve gotten a run in around her errands. Chess does love to multitask.

“Finding something to read,” I tell her, holding up the book.

She looks not even the slightest bit worse for wear from last night, and takes the book from me, eyebrows raised.

“Well, this is a whole lot,” she says. “I’m going to send a picture of this to my editor, tell her it’s what I want the paperback of Swipe Right on Life! to look like.”

“You’d look good with the seventies hair,” I reply and she winks at me.

“The bloody hand might be harder to sell my publisher on.”

“Tell them it’s the blood of the patriarchy,” I reply, and she breaks into a high, giddy laugh that I used to assume was fake but now I know is the real thing.

“So, you’ve never read it?” she asks, sounding surprised.

I shake my head. “Just saw the movie. Sarabeth Collins’s house, remember? Sleepover for her twelfth birthday party.”

Chess shakes her head, putting Lilith Rising back on the top of the bookcase. “I didn’t get invited to that one, clearly.”

Except she did, I’m sure of it. I didn’t know Sarabeth that well, and I was a shy kid. There was no way I would’ve gone if Chess hadn’t been there, too. But it’s not worth contradicting her.

“Well, it was on TV that night, and we missed, like, the first twenty minutes, but we watched the rest of it, and even though we made fun of it the entire time, I don’t think any of us actually slept afterward.”

I’d never watched the movie again, and more than twenty years later, I have only hazy memories of the plot. I remember the lead actress, her face covered in blood à la Sissy Spacek in Carrie, and I remember these shots of the house, this big, looming Victorian mansion against a very blue sky. That had made it scarier, I’d thought. Awful shit was supposed to happen in the dark, late at night. But when Victoria kills her family, she does it in the middle of the day, the blood almost garishly red in the sunlight.

“Maybe this can be my pool book,” I add, and Chess wrinkles her nose.

“Kind of dark, don’t you think?”

I shrug. “Might be neat. I mean, we listened to Aestas the other night, why not read the book that was written here, too?”

“Because Aestas is gorgeous and vibey, and this book has literal blood on the cover and the movie scared you so badly you wouldn’t sleep in your own sleeping bag.”

I laugh, but what she’s just said snags in my brain. She’s right, I hadn’t slept in my own sleeping bag that night. I’d curled up on someone else’s. I thought it was Chess’s but she just said she wasn’t there.

I almost push her on it, but shake it off. What does it matter if she was there or not, if she remembers or not?

Still, I can’t help but feel momentarily strange.

Disoriented.

It reminds me of those long months when I was dizzy all the time, my stomach lurching, and every doctor telling me there was nothing there, nothing wrong with me at all, and I shove the paperback back onto the shelf, suddenly wanting nothing more to do with Lilith Rising.

“You’re right,” I tell her. “No murder talk, no creepy books. I’m gonna go dig up an issue of Town and Country on my iPad instead.”

“That is such a solid plan,” Chess agrees as we leave the room. “And I am going to have a shower and then get to work.”

“Perfect,” I say, pulling the door closed behind me. “But first, can we go back to the fact that your next book is called Swipe Right on Life?”

She laughs, throwing her head back in that way she does. “The title was my publisher’s idea, and it’s gonna sell fifty bajillion copies, so you’re not allowed to make fun of it.”

As we head downstairs, we continue teasing each other (“It really bothers me that your alliterative titles are in alphabetical order, but you don’t see me bringing that up, Emily Sheridan.” “Okay, but at least none of my titles enthusiastically reference dating apps”), and just like last night, it’s as if no time has passed at all. Like we’ve been in each other’s pockets, in each other’s lives, every day for years.

I knew this trip would be good for us.

And if I feel a little sting that, just as I’d predicted, Chess doesn’t bring up the idea of us writing something together again, I do my best to ignore it.