Page 32 of The Unraveling of Julia

“She say no.”

Julia went for it. “Anna Mattia, what if Signora lied to you and everyone else? What if she reallydidhave a child?”

Anna Mattia shook her head. “Why she lie?”

“Maybe she was embarrassed,” Julia answered, off the top of her head. “She could have had a child but she wasn’t married. Maybe she didn’t want people to know, even you.”

“Shesayno childr’.”

“If she had a baby, given my age and hers, that could mean I’m her granddaughter, and that her daughter or her son is my birth mother or father. This picture could be one of my parents.”

Anna Mattia blinked.

“If we knew how old this photo was, then that would help us figure out who it’s a picture of. It looks old to me. Was there a time in Italy when photographs looked like this? The shape, the size? The way the edge is scalloped?” Julia ran her finger along the bumpy side. “Or what about the diaper? It’s cloth, it has real pins.”

“Yes, is old. Don’ know how old. My Sofia, we ’ave pins.” Anna Mattia’s expression darkened.

“Okay, well, thank you. I’m going to take this to the investigator tomorrow.”

Night fell, and a stillness settled over the villa. Dinner had been roast chicken with lemon andVin Santo, a Tuscan dessert wine that flavored the meat with honey, fruit, and hazelnut. The dish was served with roasted potatoes sprinkled with pecorino cheese and black pepper, so delicious that Julia vowed to exist only on Tuscan cuisine.

She ascended the staircase, her tummy full and her mood relaxed, thanks to two glasses of Chianti. She reached the top of the stair, then went into her bedroom, where she’d left the lights on. She slipped into her Notre Dame T-shirt, then took the baby picture and her laptop to bed.

She sat down, opened the laptop, and scrolled to her photo function. She opened her phone, took a photo of the baby picture, then navigated to the earliest photo of Rossi and set them side by side. There was a similarity of features, but also a difference in the jawline that didn’t change with maturation. So, the baby in the photo might not have been Rossi.

Julia thrilled to think that the baby could have been either her biological mother or father. On impulse, she snapped a selfie, then moved her phone to the set of photos, placing it next to the baby photo and the young Rossi photo, as if they were three generations in the same family.

Julia eyed the three faces, comparing them. Therewasa likeness, arelationshipin the eyes. The eye color was blue like hers, and their shape was roundish, set far apart. She knew she wasn’t imagining it, but she didn’t have any facts to go on. Her thoughts strayed to the evil eye, then to Caterina’s eyes in the nightmare.

“Stop,” Julia told herself. She didn’t want to get spooked before bedtime. Exhaustion swept over her, and she set the laptop on the night table. She plugged in her phone, climbed between the sheets, and slipped into bed without looking up at the ceiling. No reason to tempt fate. She left the lamp on, too. She was tired enough to fall asleep with the lights on.

And in the next minute, she did.

Then the nightmare began.

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Julia saw a face begin to emerge from the pitch black around her. She didn’t know when the room got so dark, but now it was, bottomless as space. Materializing out of its depth was a small head and she realized it was the baby in the photo, and in the next moment, the baby’s face began to shift and morph and change, the cheeks pulled like taffy and the chin yanked in the opposite direction, the visage being tugged and wrenched out of shape by unseen forces, and in the next moment the baby was crying, its blue eyes losing shape and definition, constantly changing and shifting shapes.

Julia tried to wake up, but she couldn’t, and she felt herself shaking in bed, turning her head right and left, trembling all over, not wanting to see what would happen next because she knew that it was going to frighten her, terrify her, scare her out of her wits. Suddenly the face turned into the stern visage of Caterina Sforza wearing a pearl necklace that she took off and handed to Julia, then Caterina’s face changed, contorting out of shape, pulled and yanked in all directions, Caterina’s electric-blue eyes blazing and suddenly askew, her lips being wrenched back into a hideous grimace, Caterina’s teeth white turning into fangs,and then Caterina tightening the necklace on Julia’s throat, making it tighter and tighter, throttling her.

Julia gasped for breath, torquing this way and that, her hands clawing her neck, scratching her own skin, trying to get off the pearl necklace, a noose strangling her, cutting off oxygen to her brain, to her body, a ligature embedding itself so deeply into her flesh that it wasdecapitatingher, severing her neck in two, separating her head from her shoulders with lethal force.

Her body writhed and bucked off the bed, trying to free itself, no longer human anymore, an organism trying to survive, out of oxygen, suffocating to death in agony, everywhere was blackness, and in the next moment, Julia saw herself running out of bed and down the hall, her fingers and nails clawing at the garotte, her head wobbling as she ran, she tried to hold it on, running even though she had no oxygen left anymore, surely she was dead.

She flew out the back door and down to the vineyard and vines curled and coiled and zoomed from the ground to meet her, fastening themselves around her wrists and ankles like ropes, wrenching her back down into the earth, and she fought back, turning this way and that, fighting to stay above the ground, she would be dead if they pulled her down, it was her own grave, and she could smell the earth and the rot and the decay, and she was dead now, even as more and more vines coiled to her, whipping toward her, wrapping themselves around her neck, her upper arms, her knees, tethering every single part of her body to the earth, dragging her down, trying to bury her alive.

Julia saw herself from above, watching herself being strangled, her eyes protruding grotesquely, her mouth gaping open, her face turning electric blue, her hair writhing wild as snakes, as the vines dragged her down, down, down into the earth, yanking her through the surfaceand all the way down to the clammy, cold, stinking decay at the black rotting center of the world.

“Signora, Signora!” Anna Mattia shook her, holding her by her arms.

“No, no, no!” Julia screamed, clawing at herself, trying to get the vines off, and in the next moment, she swallowed huge gulps of air, hiccuping oxygen, her heart thundering and her chest heaving so hard that she bucked and bucked, but she wasn’t buried anymore, she was above ground, and when she opened her eyes and looked up, all she saw was a full moon like a gargantuan pearl.

“Signora, is okay, is okay!” Anna Mattia squeezed her arms. “Is okay!”

Julia didn’t know what was happening. She wasn’t in bed anymore. Anna Mattia was there, and Piero stood behind her. Bianco barked in agitation, a white blur.

Julia couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep. She was lying on something rough and cold and hard. It was pitch dark everywhere except for two flashlights, their round beams like more and more pearls running over her body, plaguing her, taunting her.

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