Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

“You have to admit, long as we’ve been friends, this is a first for us.”

I pull one earbud out of my ear, pausing the podcast I was listening to. “What?”

Chess sits next to me on a wooden bench seat, draped in yet more bizarrely unwrinkled linen. Her hair frames her face, setting off a pair of jade statement earrings, and I wish I’d thrown on something a little nicer than the cotton floral jumpsuit and ballet flats I’d chosen.

“I said,” Chess says, reaching over to take out my other earbud, “This is a first! In our friendship.”

I look around me as we climb higher and higher toward the walled part of Orvieto. We’d decided that after nearly two weeks bumming around the villa and the local countryside, it was finally time to tackle the city itself.

“Doing touristy things?” I ask. “Because we did Panama City Beach for spring break in 2006, although I can’t blame you for not remembering that given the sheer amount of Jose Cuervo consumed.”

Nudging my foot with the toe of one leather sandal, Chess pushes her sunglasses up on top of her head. “I’m referring to this,” she says, gesturing out the window. “Riding a funicular.”

“That is true,” I agree, nodding. “Whole new mode of transport for us.”

“Planes, trains, automobiles, and funiculars,” Chess adds, and I laugh.

“Maybe you can use that as one of your new book titles. Ride That Funicular, Girl!”

“A Funicular That Only Goes Up.”

“Girls Just Wanna Have Funiculars.”

Chess laughs at that, a real laugh, and I lean against her for a second, feeling relieved. Things had mostly gone back to normal after that tense moment at the table the other day, but I’ve felt the memory of it hanging there between us, a dark cloud neither of us wants to mention. Today is the first day I’ve finally started to feel like we’re back on track, back to being Em and Chess.

“So, what have you been listening to so intently?” she asks now, gesturing at my phone, and I sheepishly hold it up.

“Murder podcast.”

She reads the title—Two Girls, One Murder—and rolls her eyes. “Oh my god, I know those women. We were at the same women in tech conference once. Completely obnoxious, deeply L.A.”

I’m not sure what that actually means—the L.A. part, that is, I get the obnoxious bit—but I nod along anyway. “They’re not always my favorites,” I say, “but there are only a couple of podcasts about the murder at the villa, and this one is a lot better than the three-part series by Fedora Dude that I told you about.”

Chess’s earrings jingle as she swings her head to look at me. “That’s two,” she says, holding up two fingers. “You are now halfway through your allotted murder mentions.”

Laughing, I wrap my own fingers around hers, pulling her hand down as the funicular shudders to a stop. “You’re going to have to give me some leeway on it because it’s actually super interesting, Chess.”

“Super macabre,” she counters, and I can’t argue with that.

I don’t tell her that I already finished reading Lilith Rising, that I actually read it all in one day, and that ever since I saw that M carved into the window upstairs, I’ve been thinking about the book and the woman who wrote it.

“Think of it this way,” I tell Chess as we step off the funicular and into a picturesque piazza. “We’re now part of the history of this house, and that whole thing was also part of the history of the house, so it’s almost like we owe it to … I don’t know, fate or history or something to learn more about other people who stayed there.”

Chess gives me a skeptical look. “I like how you’ve summed up a brutal murder with”—she makes air quotes—“‘that whole thing.’”

Then she turns, taking in the view around us, making me stop and appreciate it, too. It’s another sunny day, all electric-blue sky and puffy white clouds, and from up here, the entire valley below spreads before us.

I rest my arms against an ornate metal railing, taking a deep breath, and next to me, Chess does the same. “Best idea,” she says, and I nod.

“Best.”

The day is the best, too. We wander the city, which is every bit as quaint and medieval as I’d hoped it would be, quintessentially Italian, but so different from the hustle and bustle of Rome. Cobblestone streets crook and curve up hills, the buildings close enough together in some places to almost blot out the sky.

Chess and I stop at a little trattoria adorned with window boxes of bright pink flowers, sitting in a cozy corner inside to devour a pasta dish I can barely pronounce, but know that I’ll probably dream about for the rest of my life.

We also split two bottles of wine between us, so by the time we’re back out in the square, the massive duomo towering over us, we are both in a very good mood.

Chess pauses in front of the church, tilting her head back to look at it. It’s huge, almost overpowering in the small square, and I realize that anywhere you went in the area, your eyes would be drawn back to it over and over again. It’s that big, and also that beautiful. Graceful spires, stained glass windows, gilded mosaics …

“Take a picture of me,” Chess commands, handing me her phone.

She poses herself on the wide steps leading up to the doors, and I see it, the instant she transforms from my friend Chess into Chess Chandler .

It’s almost eerie, really, the subtle change that comes over her. You’d never guess that ten minutes ago, she was draining a wineglass and laughingly telling me a story about the last guy she dated trying to go down on her in the greenroom at one of her events.

The Chess looking soulfully at the camera now would never tell that story. She’d never have that story because this Chess would have been sitting alone in that greenroom, drinking tea and journaling her feelings. Thinking Big Thoughts About the Universe.

I take the picture, then a couple more so that she can pick the best one and then hand her phone back to her.

“I expect at least a two-paragraph caption on this one,” I tell her. “Be sure to use the word ‘spirit’ at least twice, okay?”

The last picture she’d posted on her official Instagram had been of the field behind the villa at sunrise, and my eyes had actually glazed over at all the New Age speak in the caption, stuff about truth and light and “the inner core.”

Chess gives me a tight smile, and her movements as she puts the phone back in her purse are a little stiff.

Apparently, we can talk shit and tease each other about some stuff, but the Chess Chandler brand is a sore spot.

Which is why you keep poking at it,a little voice in my head says.

A voice I choose to ignore.

“So, what now?” I ask, still looking up at the cathedral. “We’ve done window-shopping, we’ve done boozy lunch, we’ve done god … what else should we explore here in Orvieto?”

“Let’s just wander for a little while,” Chess replies, sliding her sunglasses back on. “I tend to find the best stuff that way.”

Once again, the tension between us gradually eases. The more we walk and talk, the more quintessentially Italian things we see that make us stop and gasp.

We’re about to make our way back to the Piazza Cahen and the funicular station when we pass a short line of people outside a round stone building, and Chess draws up short.

“These people clearly know something we don’t,” she says, and a young woman with bright red hair and a battered leather bag slung across her body turns around.

“It’s the Pozzo di San Patrizio,” she says, and it’s clear she’s a fellow American. “St. Patrick’s Well.”

“People line up to see a well?” I ask, and she shrugs.

“It’s apparently a really famous well? I don’t know, I’m just hitting the guidebook highlights.”

She opens her bag, and I see she’s actually got several travel guides packed in there, their spines cracked with use, names of countries stamped on their covers in bold letters. AUSTRALIA, THAILAND, VIETNAM, ITALY.

Riffling through them, she picks out a smaller, thinner book, barely a book at all, more like a slightly thicker brochure, and hands it to me.

It’s got the Duomo di Orvieto on the front, and “Day Trips in Orvieto” written across the top. “You can have it,” she says. “I’m headed out to Florence tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I reply, turning around to show the book to Chess, but she’s got her phone out, thumbs moving across the screen at a furious pace, and I look back at the travel guide, flipping it open to the part about the well.

Begun in 1527 and completed in 1537, Pozzo di San Patrizio is a marvel of Renaissance engineering. Double helix staircases allowed for easier access and constant traffic both down into the well and up from the well.…

My eyes skip over other details about the well’s dimensions, the sophistication of its architecture, the number of windows inside allowing in light. That’s the kind of stuff Matt would’ve been interested in, I’m sure, but he’s not here, and I am, so I’m not reading up on Renaissance building practices.

In fact, I’m thinking Chess and I can just skip this altogether when I see something a little further down the page.

The well’s name comes from the legend of St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Ireland, a cave that was so deep, it was said to reach to the underworld.

Something about that description seems familiar to me, and I wrack my brain, trying to remember where I had read it. Recently.

I fish in my bag, pulling out my copy of Lilith Rising. I don’t know why I’ve been carrying it around with me like some kind of totem, but I like having it close at hand.

Now I page through it, looking for the scene I’m thinking about.

I find it about a third of the way through the book, in Chapter Six.

“There’s a cave in Ireland that reaches down so deep, you can cross into the underworld.”

Colin murmured the words against Victoria’s throat, and she swallowed hard, reaching out to tangle her fingers with his.

“Have you seen it?” she asked. She felt like she was always asking him things, desperate for any hint of the life he’d had before he’d come to the village. She liked imagining it even though it also made something in her stomach twist. A Colin without her. The man he’d been before.

The man he might be again.

That thought terrified her even more than stories about caves and hell, and she pressed herself closer to him in the warm dark of the barn.

“No,” he replied. He had his head propped in his hand, looking down at her. Even in the dim light, his eyes were bright blue. “But I’d go there if I could. I’d take you there.”

“I’d go with you,” she told him, and she meant it more than she’d ever meant anything before.

A kiss, salty with sweat, hot with promise.

“I would,” Victoria insisted. “I’d follow you anywhere.”

“Even into hell?”

Colin was watching her carefully, like her answer really mattered to him, which was funny to Victoria, because what other answer was there?

“Yes.”

I scan the rest of the pages, but there’s nothing more about the cave, no reference to this particular well at all, and I’m more than a little disappointed. I don’t know why I’m enjoying it so much, finding these little hints in Lilith Rising that connect to Orvieto, but there’s something satisfying about it.

Something exciting.

The line has started moving, and the redheaded girl is already inside. But when I turn to Chess, I see that she’s on her phone, turned slightly away from me.

I wait until she’s done with her call, and am about to suggest we check out the well when she gives me an exaggerated frown. “So, I’m the worst, but that was Steven, and, apparently, he needs a couple of sample chapters from the new book for their foreign rights guy, and he needs them, like, ASAP. And of course, they’re only on my computer, so I need to get back to the villa and send them by this evening in New York. But you can stay!” she quickly offers. “Get your well on!”

Steven is Chess’s agent, a man I’ve only met once but who struck me as a terrifying human and probably a fantastic agent. My own agent, Rose, is a much better human, but only an okay agent, a trade-off I’ve mostly been fine with.

For a second I think about staying, and then shake my head.

Weirdly, I want to get back to the villa, too.

And for the first time in months, I want to write.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: Don’t Kill Me (New Book?)

Hi, Rose! Greetings from beautiful Italy! Like I’d hoped, this change of scenery is really doing me so much good. How much? Well, I’m actually writing again! You might be the only person MORE excited than I am about that fact.

The only issue is that I’m not working on Petal right now. (I know it’s still due, and thank you so much for getting me the extra time on that!) I don’t know how much you know about Mari Godwick and the murder of Pierce Sheldon, but it turns out the house we’re staying in is the very one where that happened. Now, this is obviously a GOLD MINE for a mystery writer, even one who usually writes cozies, and I’ve gotten really interested in the case. Not only that, I think there are some interesting links to be made between the murder here in 1974 and Mari’s famous horror novel, Lilith Rising, that came out in 1976. I know that would be a VERY big change of pace for me in terms of what I write, but I genuinely feel like there’s something really cool here, something that has the potential to be big, especially with how popular true crime is these days.

Once I have something more concrete, i.e., pages, I’ll send them your way, but I just wanted to loop you in on what I was doing, and also make sure you won’t murder me if I send you a new book that’s not Petal10.

Best,

Emily

MARI,1974—ORVIETO

“Christ, I’m bored.”

Noel doesn’t say it so much as declare it, flopping back onto the low sofa in the drawing room, his face turned up to the ceiling as though he were addressing the chandelier. It’s a rainy night at the villa after a rainy afternoon, and a rainy morning before that. Which means they’ve all been trapped inside together for too long.

They need the space, Mari quickly realized, in order for the delicate ecosystem they’d built here to thrive. She’d spent most of the day lying listlessly in bed, looking over the pages she’d written, wondering why that voice that had seemed so vibrant just a week ago had suddenly stopped speaking.

Victoria’s story seems to have come to an abrupt halt, stranding her in the scene where she first meets the village reverend she’ll eventually fall in love with, and nothing Mari has done—long walks to think, glasses of wine to lower her inhibitions—has worked. The project has, like so many before it, stalled completely.

“Aren’t the rest of you?” Noel asks when no one replies to his announcement, and when he drops his chin to his chest, scanning the room, Mari feels his eyes land on her.

She’s curled on the sofa opposite him, her notebook by her side just in case Victoria regains her voice.

“No,” she says, flatly. At her feet, Pierce laughs, resting his cheek against her knee. His guitar sits idle next to him, a notebook open but no words written.

“Mari is never bored,” he tells Noel. “Whole bloody party going on in that head of hers.”

It’s a compliment, or meant to be one; Mari knows that, but it still irritates her when he pulls this shit, talking about her like she’s not there. And he’s doing it much more than usual around Noel. He’s eager to impress, she thinks to herself.

“We could go on a little adventure?” Lara suggests. As usual, she’s perched near Noel, not quite sitting next to him because if she gets too close, he might move away, and then her shame would be on display for all to see.

“What about Rome?” Lara continues.

That’s another tic she’s picked up, this constant questioning. Everything ends with a slight rise in her voice.

“Rome would also be boring,” Noel says, dismissing her with a wave. “And besides, I’m paying for this bloody place, I’m not going to put you all up in Rome, too.”

He draws the O out, the word drawled—Rooohhhhhhme—just in case Lara didn’t know he was mocking her, Mari supposes.

“You could try to write some music,” Mari says. “Which I believe was the point of this entire trip.”

It’s frustrating, watching Noel and Pierce nearly get stuck in on something only to grow distracted when Noel wants to go for a drive or take the rowboat out or swim in the pool or do any of a dozen things that won’t bring him or Pierce—or Mari, for that matter—any closer to their goals.

And there’s that studio space waiting back in London, that golden chance for Pierce that seems to be slipping further and further away.

Lately, Mari has begun to wonder whether, if Noel can propel Pierce to greater heights, it means that the inverse is true, too. Should this all fall apart, is Pierce going to be hit by the shrapnel of Noel’s failure?

But Noel just ignores her, like she’d known he would.

“We oughta go into Orvieto,” Johnnie says. “The old part.”

Tilting his head back, Noel fixes Johnnie with a look. “And see what, exactly? A church? Some old ladies selling bread?”

Unlike Lara, Johnnie never flinches from Noel’s barbs, merely shaking them off like he does everything else. He’d clearly been a bit wounded by Mari not immediately throwing herself at him over the etched glass, but on the whole, he seems to have recovered, and she’s relieved. There are already too many romantic complications in this house without adding Johnnie’s crush on her into the mix.

He glances over at her now, his gaze warm, then turns his attention back to Noel. “Supposedly, they’ve got a well that goes down into hell.”

Noel perks up at that. “Really?”

“Well,” Johnnie amends, “it’s named after some place in Ireland that goes down into hell, but it’s still pretty fucking deep.”

Scowling, Noel sinks further into the sofa. “Think I’ll pass on seeing a very deep hole in the ground, mate. I’m not quite that bored yet.”

Johnnie may not mind Noel’s jibes, but it’s clear he enjoyed those few seconds when Noel actually appeared interested in something he had to say, so he tries again. “Also, the lady who runs the shop down the hill told me this villa is meant to be haunted. Apparently someone topped themselves up here back in the fifteen hundreds.”

“Whoever this unfortunate person was, I feel a kinship,” Noel says, sighing dramatically as he tips his head back, and Mari can’t bite her tongue any longer.

“Yes, what a hardship, staying in a gorgeous villa with all the food and drink you could want and no shortage of beautiful things to look at. However have you coped thus far, milord?”

It’s a nickname she’s given him over the past week, a pointed reminder that for all his decadence and rock-star pretensions, he’s still the son of an earl, and Mari suspects he loves it and hates it in equal measure.

Lara shoots her a dirty look, but Noel only laughs.

“Now, see? Pierce is right. Mari is neither bored nor boring.”

His gaze slides to Lara, upper lip curling slightly. “Some of you should clearly take notes.”

The hurt that flashes over Lara’s face is gone as quickly as it appeared, but Mari catches it. She feels sorry for her stepsister, truly she does, but she also can’t deny the primal satisfaction she feels, seeing Lara taken down a few notches. Mari knows she should be ashamed of herself, but she isn’t.

Noel stands, slapping his hands against his thighs. He’s once again thrown that garish dressing gown on over a pair of black jeans and nothing else, the rings on his fingers glinting in the candlelight. “I’ve changed my mind,” he announces, dark hair flopping over his brow. “Come, Sheldon, let’s give Mistress Mary what she’s commanded.”

Pierce stands up, guitar in hand, his gaze fixed on Noel, face bright. His free hand absentmindedly brushes over Mari’s hair as he goes to where Noel has set up his guitar near the window. They’d dragged over a couple of wooden chairs from somewhere else in the house a few days ago when they’d sworn they were going to write, only to get distracted by … lord, Mari can’t even remember.

There are so many distractions at Villa Rosato.

But now, finally, they’re sitting down, Pierce’s notebook is open on his knee, and Noel is actually listening to him.

Lara crosses the room to flop onto Mari’s sofa, leaning her head against Mari’s shoulder. “Aren’t they beautiful?” she says dreamily, her eyes fixed on Pierce and Noel. Pierce is already strumming his guitar, Noel nodding along, watching the placement of Pierce’s fingers.

And they are beautiful, but it irks Mari, that dreamy wonder in Lara’s voice.

“I’ve started writing a little myself.”

It’s Johnnie, who has taken a seat on her other side, his thigh pressed against hers, and Mari frowns in confusion.

“I saw you were writing,” Johnnie goes on, gesturing to the notebook on the other side of Lara. “And I thought I might try it. I play music, too, you know. Brought my guitar, but Noel never wants me to play with him, so maybe writing could be something I’m—”

“Right.” Mari cuts him off, her gaze drawn back to the two men in front of her, and though she knows she’s being a little rude, she doesn’t care, not right now. Right now, she wants to watch what she’s sure is history being made. The beginning of something great.

She feels Johnnie’s eyes on the side of her face, but she doesn’t turn to meet his gaze, and after a moment, he gets up with a sigh.

Mari hears the creak of the door, hears his footsteps as he leaves, a muted slam coming from somewhere upstairs.

“What’s his problem?” Lara asks in a low voice. Pierce is still playing, but he’s just repeating the same two chords, and Noel is shaking his head, reaching over to scratch something in Pierce’s notebook.

“Johnnie?” she answers, her eyes still on Pierce. “I don’t know.”

“He’s hot for you,” Lara whispers, and Mari frowns.

“He is not,” she says, even though she knows that he is, and Lara laughs, her head tipping back. It’s a real laugh, her real voice. She’s not playing a part for Noel or for Pierce right now, and Mari remembers that there was a time when she actually really liked spending time with her stepsister. Back when they were girls, sharing the same bedroom, sleeping in twin beds and whispering secrets in the dark.

“I have eyes, Mare,” Lara says, nudging her. “And he clearly has taste.”

She snuggles in close to Mari again, all easy affection because that’s Lara. Mari has always felt her own prickliness acutely, knows that she’s not easy to talk to or really get to know. Lara, though … it’s all out there with Lara, and there are moments, like now, that Mari is glad for it.

Still, Mari wishes things were different with her and Lara. That they could just be sisters, sisters who love each other, sisters who aren’t vying for the same thing.

For the same man.

But that was always their way, wasn’t it? Before Pierce, it was Mari’s father. Lara had been twelve, nearly thirteen, when her mother had married William Godwick, but that hadn’t stopped her from calling him “Papa,” from running to him every evening when he got home to regale him with some story from school or a new book she’d read or an album she’d listened to.

Mari had always thought it was a little sad, how eager Lara had been for William’s attention, but then her father always indulged it, always smiled fondly at Lara in a way he never did at Mari, no matter her accomplishments.

Maybe Lara was simply easier to love because she wasn’t a living reminder of the woman William had loved and lost. Or maybe it’s something in Mari herself that makes men she loves, be they father or lover, look for something else in Lara.

That’s over,she tells herself. They both promised you it would never happen again, and, besides, Lara’s clearly hung up on Noel now.

But when Mari glances over at Lara, it’s not Noel she’s watching with those dark eyes.

And Pierce stares back. Not for long, and his eyes almost immediately slide to Mari, but his fingers nearly miss the note. Suddenly Lara’s skin feels uncomfortably warm and damp next to hers.

She’s thinking about going up to bed when something in Pierce’s playing shifts. The song becomes less hesitant, more solid, and then Noel finally picks up his own guitar.

The candles flicker and make eerie shapes on the wall while outside, the rain continues to pour down, thunder rattling the panes of glass in the windows. The storm that had not so long ago made her feel claustrophobic and trapped now makes the room seem cozy and close in a good way. Like their own universe.

Then Noel starts to play, and Mari instantly understands.

All the drugs and the women and the men, all the wild, dark rumors, all of that is both a distraction from and an offshoot of what this man can do with his guitar, his voice, and his words.

His elegant fingers move over the strings, and later, Mari will try to recall the exact melody of this song. Noel will never play it again, certainly never record it, and years after this night, when she asks him about it, he’ll swear to not remember even playing.

But Mari will remember, and this song will stay with her.

Noel begins to sing in that low voice she’s heard a thousand times on the radio. It’s different in person, though, and her heart seems to beat both a little harder and a little slower in her chest.

This, she understands, is the Noel people fall in love with.

And then there’s another soft chord as Pierce picks up his guitar again, too. He finds the harmonies easily, Noel lifting his head to give the other man a surprisingly kind smile. Pierce practically glows in response, and the song continues, lifting, falling, raising goose bumps on Mari’s arms.

When it ends, there’s no sound except the patter of the rain on the windows, and Mari’s own breathing in her ears.

“That was gorgeous,” Lara enthuses, and not even her bright energy can quite puncture the moment, which feels heavy with meaning, with … something that Mari can’t quite put a finger on.

They play more songs, that night, Noel and Pierce. Songs of Noel’s, including Mari’s favorite, “Autumn Sun.” They play songs they each like, Pierce’s sweet voice lending unexpected depth to lighter tunes like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” Noel’s famous velvet baritone turning “California Dreamin’” wry and less wistful.

Eventually Lara gets up from the sofa, clearly intending for Noel to follow.

He doesn’t, of course, and there’s another muffled slamming of a door upstairs, but by then, Mari is drowsy and happy, content to watch Pierce and this man he admires so much create music in the candlelight.

She’s not sure when she falls asleep exactly. The music makes everything soft and hazy, lulling her into dreams. Mari’s never been a fan of drugs, barely drinks more than a glass or two of wine, but she thinks this is what those kinds of altered escapes must feel like, this slow slide, like slipping into a warm bath.

When she wakes up, the music has stopped, and she opens her eyes to see Pierce and Noel are now standing, their guitars abandoned.

It takes her a moment to make sense of what she’s seeing. Noel’s mouth on Pierce’s, Pierce’s hand almost tentative on Noel’s waist underneath that dressing gown. Pierce has always seemed so tall to her, but Noel is taller, his grip surprisingly strong in Pierce’s soft brown hair.

When they part, Pierce’s face is flushed, his throat moving as he swallows hard, and when he looks over at Mari, she waits for the guilt to flash across his face, for outrage to rise in her.

But Pierce only watches her, his gaze steady and warm, and there’s no anger in her at all, she realizes. Only a sort of vague disappointment that they’ve stopped.

Then Pierce turns toward her even as his hand never leaves Noel’s waist. “Come here, Mari,” he says, his voice soft, and she gets up from the sofa, wondering if she’s still dreaming.

Noel is watching her, too, smirking lazily, but she can sense the tension in him, and when she gets closer, she sees that he’s actually trembling.

It melts something within her, and she leans forward, the threadbare carpet under her bare feet, the candles burning all around them.

In the mirror just over the fireplace, Mari sees the three of them, watches as Pierce comes to stand behind her, kissing the place where neck meets shoulder, his hands skating down her bare arms.

She doesn’t look like herself, or maybe it’s that she finally looks like herself, her eyes half-lidded, her lips parted, cheeks flushed.

Noel moves to stand in front of her, his hand once again going to Pierce’s hair over her shoulder, but he’s looking at her, and she wonders what he’s seeing.

“In for a penny, in for a pound, Mistress Mary,” he murmurs, and Mari rises up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to his.

His kiss is different from Pierce’s, the only one she has to compare it to. There hadn’t been anyone before him, no quick snogs behind the school, no fumbles at school dances. She had always thought it was because, somehow, she knew she was waiting for Pierce.

But she likes this, likes the firmness of Noel’s mouth, the forthrightness of it all, his hand on her neck, his tongue against hers, and as she leans closer, Lara’s face is there in her mind for a moment.

We’re even now,she thinks, but just as quickly, she’s shoving that thought away because she doesn’t want Lara here, a part of this moment.

This isn’t about evening the score. This is about what Mari wants, and right now, she wants this.

This, finally, is a version of Pierce’s ideal world that might get to include her as well.

Thunder rattles the house, the storm growing even stronger, and Mari gives in.

Too close.

It’s past noon, she knows immediately, and the rain has stopped. The light that pours through the windows is bright, illuminating everything that had been shadowy and dim the night before.

Mari is on the floor by the fireplace, a chenille blanket covering her from the waist down, her head pillowed on Pierce’s chest. He’s sleeping like he always does, like a little kid, his arms thrown over his head, his face peaceful.

Noel is a warm weight at her back. His arm lays heavily across her, palm resting on Pierce’s bare stomach, and Mari takes a deep breath, looking up at the ceiling.

She waits for regret to come, but there isn’t any. It’s done, after all, there’s no taking it back.

And, she thinks, with a smile that threatens to turn into a laugh, what’s the point of going to a villa in Italy with a notorious rock star if you don’t let yourself go a little wild?

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences, and as she gingerly disentangles herself and finds her discarded dress, she knows she needs to deal with them as soon as possible.

A part of her had hoped the person at the door might be Elena. The girl might be a little scandalized, but it would give her a story for her family and the rest of the town for donkey’s years, so the damage there would be fairly minimal.

Johnnie might be hurt, and she regretted that, but he also had no claim on her, so that was easily handled.

But, of course, it’s not Elena or Johnnie.

She finds Lara sitting on the end of the diving board, her knees drawn up to her chest, her shoulders hitching, and Mari steels herself as she approaches.

“Lara,” she starts, but Lara whirls on her before she can say anything else.

“Why him?” her stepsister demands, and Mari, who was ready to be conciliatory about the whole thing, feels anger flare in her chest.

“Why him?” she repeats, and Lara has the gall to nod, her head bobbing.

“You know how I feel about Noel. You know, and you did … whatever that was anyway.”

“I’m fairly sure you knew how I felt about Pierce when you fucked him,” Mari fires back, her arms tight across her chest. “So please do not pull this wounded act now, Lara. Besides, last night was just…”

Images unspool in her mind, and she tries very hard to keep any of what she’s thinking off her face.

“It was a bit of fun. A little wildness. Nothing more.”

“That makes it worse,” Lara cries, standing up on the diving board, her hands balled into fists at her sides. It would be a much more dramatic gesture, the kind of thing that begged for a plaintive “Don’t jump!” from Mari, but of course, Lara is standing over six feet of beautiful turquoise water, and Mari can’t help the laugh that bursts out of her.

It’s just so … typically Lara, so overwrought but ultimately pointless and silly, and Mari is so, so tired of this particular drama that she and her stepsister keep playing out.

She shrugs at Lara and throws her hands up. “I really don’t see how it is, but—”

“Because I love Pierce,” Lara says, and now Mari doesn’t feel like laughing at all. “I love him, but he loves you!” Lara goes on. “So, I tried to love Noel instead, but you couldn’t even let me have that.”

“Noel won’t even let you have that,” Mari reminds her, but Lara just makes a disgusted sound, marching down the diving board and back onto the patio. The door slams again, and Mari wonders if all the hinges in the villa will need to be replaced at the end of the summer.

Tipping her head back, she looks up, where clouds are already beginning to form, promising yet another evening trapped inside the house, trapped with Lara and her feelings.

Mari can’t help it. She opens her mouth wide and screams, literally screams at the sky, a howl of frustration that hurts her throat, but at least relieves some of the pressure in her chest.

That done, she flops into one of the chairs next to the pool, the metal screeching against the stone.

“Christ, I hope that wasn’t a comment on last night’s performance.”

She whips her head around to see Noel standing in the doorway that leads into the kitchen. He’s wearing sunglasses and carrying a mug of coffee, the chenille blanket that had been covering Mari earlier now wrapped around his waist, and he makes his careful way out to where she sits, taking the chair next to her and sinking into it with a sigh.

Mari guesses she should feel differently about Noel now that he’s made her come, but it’s just that same mix of faint disbelief that she’s talking to Noel Gordon, mixed with an almost begrudging fondness—plus the slightest tinge of annoyance.

Which is a relief, actually. It would be disastrous to feel anything more for this man.

She wonders if Pierce knows that.

But then Pierce’s tastes have always run to women. To girls, really. Mari was sixteen when she met him, and his wife, Frances, was only fifteen when he took her from her boarding school in the north of England and crossed into Scotland to marry her.

He worships Noel, and clearly enjoyed himself last night, but Mari instinctively understands that what Pierce was after was experience and novelty, and now that he’s had them, last night will probably not be repeated.

Which is undoubtedly for the best.

Noel blows out a breath over the top of his coffee, his long legs stretched in front of him, feet crossed at the ankles. “What’s that thing you’re writing?” he asks her, and Mari startles.

“What?”

“That journal you’re always carrying around. You left it on the sofa last night, and I had a gander this morning.”

“You read my journal?”

He shrugs, completely unapologetic. “I was hoping to find moony sonnets about me, so imagine my surprise to see Mistress Mary is writing a novel.”

She flushes red. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“But I did. And it’s honestly quite good, which I find extremely annoying given that you’re already young and beautiful. Being talented on top of that just isn’t fair.”

Mari doesn’t reply, and Noel clears his throat. “This is the part where you’re supposed to point out that I also have all these attributes.”

That makes her laugh against her will, and he smiles again, affectionately nudging her foot with his own. “I am serious, though. You’ve got something there. I hope you’ll follow it wherever it leads.”

Those few pages, still unfinished, call to her, and Mari allows herself a small smile.

“I hope I will, too.”

There were always rumors about just how involved the five young people at Villa Rosato were that summer. Of the five, Noel Gordon was the eldest, and he was only twenty-six. Pierce Sheldon was twenty-three, Johnnie Dorchester a mere twenty, and Mari Godwick and Lara Larchmont were both still teenagers, just nineteen in the summer of 1974. They were also all part of a set that ran fast and loose when it came to sexual partners and mores. Pierce had already left one wife, as had Noel, and both men had been involved with Lara Larchmont at different times.

But it’s also tempting to make things more illicit than they actually were, especially when it comes to rock royalty. It’s equally possible that none of the rumors were true at all, and that the romantic configurations at Villa Rosato were fairly tame. None of the survivors ever indicated differently.

While Noel Gordon and Mari Godwick remained close for the remainder of the former’s short life, Mari never discussed the events of that summer, not even in her private diaries, which her literary agent donated to the University of Edinburgh after her death in 1993. There is only one entry dealing with Noel Gordon, and it is found on a page labeled March 22, 1980. It says simply, “Noel is dead. How can Noel be dead?”

Intriguingly, there was a bit after that that had been scratched out in a flurry of black ink, but X-ray technology done on the diary revealed the words, “It’s not fair that I’m the only one left.”

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

The first thing you notice about Lara Larchmont is how normal she looks.

There’s none of the mystique of a Stevie Nicks, nor the arresting beauty of a Linda Ronstadt. There’s just a dark-haired girl of about medium height with brown eyes and a smile that’s a little crooked, but completely charming. As she welcomes me into her London flat, I think she could be a girl you went to school with, a friend from down the street.

A friend whose debut album has sold well over a million copies, mind you, but other than the poshness of her Belgrave address and the gorgeous furnishings in her flat, you’d have no way of knowing that …

There is only one topic completely off-limits with Larchmont: the events of July 29, 1974. Everyone knows the story. It was one of rock music’s biggest scandals, a dark and lurid tale of sex, drugs, and murder involving one of the most famous men in rock, Noel Gordon—a man Lara was, it was rumored, pregnant by that summer, though given that she very demonstrably does not have a child, who can say how accurate that rumor was?

The murder of Pierce Sheldon reverberated through rock circles, and both Lara and her stepsister, the writer Mari Godwick, were swept up in it. The swift conviction of John Dorchester, a hanger-on and drug dealer who had accompanied Gordon to Italy that summer, did nothing to stem interest in the story, and his suicide in an Umbrian prison just six months after said conviction only fueled more tawdry conspiracies.

Five years later, though, most of that has died down, eclipsed by the success of Mari Godwick’s sensational novel Lilith Rising and Lara’s Aestas.

And it is Aestas that provides me my one chance at getting a hint of Lara’s feelings about Villa Rosato and the summer that saw the gruesome murder of Pierce Sheldon.

I wait to bring it up until nearly the end of the interview when the sun has set outside and the tea we were drinking has been replaced with two vodka tonics.

“Why the title?”

Larchmont’s dark eyes narrow slightly.

“Pardon?” she asks, but I don’t think it’s a question. I think she’s trying to give me a way out. I probably should have taken it, but I press on.

“Aestas means summer in Latin,” I say. “And you wrote these songs in Italy in the summer of 1974.”

It’s the closest I’ll get to mentioning the events that happened at Villa Rosato, and there is something in the way Lara Larchmont looks at me in that moment that makes me feel slightly ashamed—slightly grubby—for even bringing it up.

“I did,” she finally says. “But the title of the album was really inspired by Camus. You know, ‘I found there was, inside me, an invincible summer,’ all that.”

Since she was gracious enough to let me slide in something so personal, I return the favor and don’t press. And honestly, there is something of the invincible summer about Lara Larchmont. Her smiles are easy, her eyes warm, and she seems untouched by all that darkness in a way that the other survivors of Villa Rosato are not. Photographs of Noel Gordon taken just this past summer in Venice reveal a man whose legendary beauty is fading (and whose equally legendary talent is being squandered), and there’s always been a whiff of the tragic around Mari Godwick, despite her literary success.

But Lara Larchmont still walks in the sun.

I mention this later to an acquaintance, a writer who’ll remain nameless but was friendly with Larchmont and her set in the early seventies, and is still a force to be reckoned with in music journalism now.

To my surprise, he disagrees, shaking his head vehemently. “No, that summer ate her the fuck up, too, man. She’s just better at hiding it than the rest of them.”

—“Invincible Summer: The Rise and Rise of Lara Larchmont,”

Rolling Stone,November 1979