Page 21 of The Unraveling of Julia

Julia figured it was the language barrier. “I’m talking about her personal belongings like her clothes, books, or whatever. All her stuff.”

Anna Mattia shook her head, frowning. “She make Piero burn.”

“What?” Julia didn’t get it. “I mean her things, all of her things.”

“She burn.”

“She didn’t burn her clothes, did she?”

“Yes. She ’ave many.”

Julia blinked. “Do you mean she burned everything she owned?”

“Yes, sorry.” Anna Mattia nodded gravely.

“Everything?” Julia repeated, shocked. She’d never get Rossi’s DNA now.

“Yes.” Anna Mattia frowned, more deeply. “I say, give the church. People need. I say, sell, make money. She say no. Piero say, she is Signora. We must do.” Anna Mattia looked frustrated, gesticulating. “She don’ want people touch her things,’aveher things.”

“What about her laptop? Did she burn that, too?”

“Yes.”

“Buthow? Do electronics even burn? There must have been so much stuff.”

“Somuch!” Anna Mattia threw up her little arms. “Toomuch! Piero make a big, big fire. I worry trees catch to the fire.”

Julia couldn’t imagine it. “Where did you do this?”

“Come.” Anna Mattia led the way, and they went out the back door. They took a right turn and went a direction that Julia hadn’t explored yet. It was a hill, its ground uneven, and they descended on a trampled dirt path. Ahead was a stone carriage house in abject disrepair, as ivy-covered as the villa. A red Fiat Panda was parked in a bay on its open ground floor.

Anna Mattia pointed at the carriage house. “We live.”

“Very nice,” Julia said, but they both knew otherwise.

Anna Mattia continued walking, and Julia could see beyond the carriage house to an open equipment shed with stone sides and a corrugated tin roof. An old Kubota backhoe, a John Deere mower, and other heavy machinery were parked inside. They reached the shed, passed it, then kept going around the back. A vast clearing came into view, an area flattened, blackened, and scorched.

Julia felt stricken. “When did she do this?”

“When she is sick.”

“Did she have chemo, radiation?”

“No. She say no, is too late.” Anna Mattia looked over, her hooded eyes flinty. “She say doctor try kill her.”

“She was afraid the doctors would kill her? That’s crazy!” Julia hated the term but she didn’t have a better one yet. “Was she crazy, Anna Mattia?”

Anna Mattia pursed her lips.

“Please, tell me. Sheseemscrazy. She won’t see the doctors. She lives like a hermit. She has no friends. She lets her villa and her vineyard go to ruin. She doesn’t fix anything or keep it up, even though she has the money. Why?”

Anna Mattia nodded, cringing. “Paranoico.”

“Paranoid?” Julia didn’t want to think Rossi was paranoid, delusional,orcrazy, if they were blood-related. Her bewildered gaze returned to the scorched circle. On impulse, she walked over, her footsteps crunching on charred debris. Ash darkened the toes of her espadrilles, and her footsteps stirred up a residual burned odor. Seared shards, chips, fragments, and pieces of fabric and wood lay everywhere in unrecognizable pieces.

Julia stood at the center of the blackened circle, and a wave of despair swept over her. Suddenly she noticed a tiny white speck among the black. She walked over, picked it up, and brushed off the ashes, amazed to see a pearl. One side was blackened from the smoke, but the other was still white. She held it in her open palm, and it was as perfectly round as a miniature moon, with its own dark side.

Julia walked back to Anna Mattia. “Look at this. I think it came from a necklace.”

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