Page 12 of The Villa

It really doesn’t. Because it’s not just the way the placelooks. It’s how itfeels.

Peaceful, like a private little universe, tucked away from the world.

I know immediately that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.

It’s a feeling that gets even stronger when Chess opens the heavy oak front door, ushering me into a cool and dim foyer. The floors underfoot are stone, the walls painted the same warm yellow as the outside of the house, and just by the front door, there’s an old, scarred table with a vase of bright sunflowers.

“I picked these,” Chess tells me, reaching out to stroke the petals. “There’s a whole field of them right behind the house. It’s like they were determined to make this place as perfectly dreamy and Italian as they could.”

And they succeeded. This house doesn’t just live up to my fantasies—it exceeds them, wildly.

Another thing that is, I have to admit, perfectly Chess.

“Soooo?” she asks now, lacing her fingers together and lifting her hands under her chin.

“I can’t believe someone got murdered in this house,” I reply, and she laughs.

“All right, that’s your first mention of the murder, you only have four left.”

“I’ll save them,” I promise, because standing in this front hallway right now, light pouring in through an archedwindow at the top of the stairs, murder is the last thing I’m thinking about. Besides, Chess was right—it sounds like it was more of your typical drugs and rock ’n’ roll fiasco of the seventies, not exactly the kind of Gothic story that spooky legends are built around. A musician beaten to death by some lowlife, in an argument that got out of control because everyone involved was high out of their minds. And anyone who was there that night is long dead.

“Besides,” Chess adds now, guiding me farther into the house, “people get murdered in all kinds of houses, so why not gorgeous villas?”

She has a point, but it isn’t the elegance of the house that I was thinking about. It’s that this place exudes a warmth, a serenity that feels totally at odds with someone getting their brains bashed in.

But I don’t want to think about any of that right now.

Right now, I want a shower, a glass of wine, and at least two hours of sitting on that patio outside, thinking about absolutely nothing at all.

“Do you want the big tour?” Chess asks, sweeping a hand out in front of her.

I don’t, really. I think it might be fun to explore the house completely on my own, finding out its secrets and surprises for myself.

But I can tell that Chess has been looking forward to this, playing Lady of the Manor, so I smile. “Go for it.”

She claps her hands, then threads her arm through mine, pulling me along.

It’s smaller than I’d thought it would be, cozier. You hear “villa,” and you start thinking of some sprawling mansion with wings and secret passageways. But Villa Aestas is homier than that. There’s an appropriately grand staircase just pastthe front door, leading up to a landing with a hallway on either end, bedrooms branching off in both directions. There are at least four bedrooms that I see, and Chess leads me to one on the right, opening a door with a flourish.

“Obviously if you don’t like it, you can pick one of the others, but this room felt the most Em-ish to me,” she says. She’s leaning against the doorframe, smiling her Chess-iest smile, and, as always, she’s right.

This bedroom is small, but it faces the pond and the sloping back lawn, and in the distance, I can just make out the walls of Orvieto.

There’s a white desk under the window, and the bed is done up in shades of blue, calm against the white walls with their framed prints of bucolic Umbrian scenes. Lace-trimmed curtains float in the breeze. The room is perfect, down to the details, like it’s a movie set.

“Admit that I’m good,” Chess says, and I turn to her, my throat suddenly tight.

“You’re the best,” I reply, and I mean it. Not just because she’s invited me here, or because she picked out this lovely space for me, but because, for all the weirdness that’s happened between us over all the time I’ve known her, she really, truly is my best friend.

She hugs me again, her grip tight, and then pulls back. “You’re going to write so many brilliant words at that desk, I just know it.”

I give a slightly watery laugh, rubbing my nose. “You have more faith in me than I do.”

Chess shrugs, drifting back toward the door. “I always have.”

CHAPTER FOUR

I end up getting that glass of wine and those hours to myself, sitting in a padded lounge chair on the patio, eventually drifting off, awakening to the sun setting and the mouthwatering smell of roast chicken, lemons, and garlic drifting from the open door to the kitchen.

---