Page 29 of The Villa

It’s sweet, Mari thinks.

It’s simple.

Her fingers trace the shape as she imagines Johnnie sitting up here, scratching it into the glass with… what? Probably a razor blade, a pocketknife.

But as she looks at it, she imagines something else, something more romantic. A ring, maybe. A diamond ring, stolen from a jewelry box.

And then she catches sight of her own face in the window again. A girl. A girl in a window seat, scratching an initial with a stolen ring.

Mari places the candle in one of the brass sconces lining the hallway, picks up her notebook, and arranges herself on the window seat.

She had left the pad with those two words scrawled across it—Houses remember—back in London, but she writes them again now, and this time, they don’t sit there alone on thepaper. Other words follow. There’s a house, and there’s a girl. Victoria. She’s come to this house with her family for the summer, and she doesn’t know it yet, but this will be the summer that changes everything. Although, maybe she does sense it. Maybe that’s why she scratches her initial on the glass, wanting to leave her mark on this place that will leave its mark on her.

When Mari gets into bed, it’s nearly three in the morning, and she has ten pages of her notebook filled, and something buzzing, fizzing inside her chest that wasn’t there until now.

The next day, Johnnie finds her out near the pool, her notebook on her lap, her pen scratching across the paper.

“So?” he asks her, and she startles, her brain still stuck in the fields of England, in Victoria’s world, not her own.

It takes her a second to come back to herself, but by then, Johnnie is already losing some of his bright smile, his feet shifting awkwardly. He wants to sit on the end of her chair, she thinks, but isn’t sure if he’d be welcome.

“Did you see it?” he asks. “In the window?”

She’d actually forgotten about it. Not the letter itself—that had started her writing, after all—but the intent behind it, who actually did it and why. From the moment she’d started to write, that little detail had becomehers, infused with the meaning thatshewanted to give it, and she wonders if this is how Pierce and Noel feel when they write songs.

Powerful. In control. Possessive.

“I did,” she says to Johnnie now, making herself smile even as her fingers itch to make her pen move again. “It was really sweet, Johnnie, thank you.”

“Sweet,” he repeats. It’s the wrong thing to say, clearly, but she can’t make herself take it back.

It’s a fucking initial carved into glass,she thinks, irritation makingher uncharitable.Pierce blew up his entire life and mine so we could be together, did youreallythink that one letter would impress me?

But still, she keeps smiling and he eventually nods, sort of shuffles off, and finally, Mari is alone again.

Well,she amends as she starts to write.Not really alone.

She has Victoria now, after all.

[INTRO MUSIC FADES OUT]

BEX:Hiiii, my lovelies! Okay, so as you may have noticed, our music selection was a little different today. That was your first hint. A hint about what we’re gonna talk about on this fine evening. Or morning or afternoon, I guess, I don’t know when you’re listening to us blather on.

KALI:I mean, the title of this episode pretty much tells them what we’re talking about, so…

BEX:I know! But I was trying to be mysterious,god.

KALI:Sorry!

BEX:Always fucking up my attempt at setting a mood, Thompson, I swear.

KALI:I’m just pointing out that the very nature of podcasting doesn’t really allow for surprises when it comes to the subject of said podcast.

BEX:[pause] Okay, that’s fair. Anyway! What you just heard was a snippet from a song called “Sister Mine,” by one Lara Larchmont, and it’s from the albumAestas.

KALI:If you have never heard or seen the albumAestas, please go to your mom or grandmother’s house right now, because it’s there. Promise.

BEX:If you ever came home from fifth grade and found your mom listening to music and crying in her den, it was probablyAestas.

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