The pain was immediate, a thunderclap of it that struck me down. A flood of hot liquid splashed down to the snow beneath me.
I let out a cry as pressure began at my sides and rippled inward, a hardness wrapping around my abdomen like the tightest of corsets, squeezing all breath from me. My legs trembled.
No, not now.
I gripped the balustrade and let out a low moan.
“Sibilla?”
Buona’s light footsteps raced up the steps and she appeared on the colonnade again. I felt her gaze rake through me, taking in the wetness beneath me and the pain that was hardly allowing me to breathe. She hesitated, and her hands tightened around her apron as she looked out across the land. I saw the moment she made the decision, turning away from the path the man in the blue cap had taken.
“We need to get you inside,” she said and started toward me.
“Don’t come near me!” I said. “Don’t you dare touch me!”
Another wave of pain, red and hot, swept across me, and I gasped under its force.
Despite my words, Buona hurried to my side and tried to take my arm, but I pushed her away. I wouldn’t make it that easy for her to be rid of me. All she would have to do was shove me again, perhaps down the steps, and it’d be over. I’d be out of the way just as she’d obviously wanted since she’d arrived. No, I’d not give her the opportunity.
I forced myself to move. I wanted to race down the stairs, but I knew I’d not make it past the mill because this creature inside me wanted out, and there was no stopping it. I could feel it. It would kick its way through me if I tried to leave.
Bending under the pressure around my midsection, I stumbled back inside.
I’ll never make it out again. That was my only chance and it’s gone.
Buona tried to herd me toward the bedroom, but I hissed at her and went to the music room instead.
The next surge of pain burned the inside of my eyelids sun-red, and Giovanni’s dark silhouette pressed against it, the paper cutout of a man by a hospital bed. All wringing hands and well-earned guilt stamped on his posture.
How kind and thoughtful I’d thought him to be, not daring to leave my side for days at a time after my “accident.” How devoted.
How stupid of me.
But this time he’d not get away with it. Not him. Nor Buona.
“Sibilla, do you want to sit down?” Buona said. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to the bed?”
“Leave me be,” I spat out at her.
I walked across the room, the movement easing some of the tightness, some of the brightness from my eyes.
Giovanni and the bedside faded.
“I’m going to call—”
A sizzling sound, like lit sparklers, stopped Buona’s words and pulled my gaze to the corner of the room. The collection of electrical wires high on the wall gave a jerk, as if something heavy had tangled in the center of it, yanking cables from their circuits.
“Watch out!” Buona said, grabbing my hand and tugging me back as a raw, live wire swung my way.
A shape crackled into sight. The silhouette of a body, snapping and popping with light as it dangled from the wires. Its feet tapped against the wall, burning it black, before disappearing.
Santissima Madre.
The radio whined down to silence.
“Merda, there goes the power,” Buona said.
“How did you do that?” I gasped. “That’s not possible.”
“Pay attention, Sibilla.” She pulled on my arm again. “I’ll have to fetch Piero and tell him to go for the doctor. Don’t move from this room and don’t go near those wires while I call your husband back from wherever he is so he can stay with you.”
I tore my gaze from the wall and shook my head.
“Well, I can’t just leave you alone,” she said.
“Go.” I wiped at the sweat trailing down the side of my face. “I don’t need you.”
The girl frowned, her eyes fixed on me.
“Go!”
But she didn’t move.
And then another bright wave of pain swept me under. I gripped the armchair as my knees softened, my jaws clenching tightly at the feeling that someone, something, was kicking at my spine.
“It’s happening too quickly,” Buona said, coming closer again. “The gaps between the pain should be longer. This isn’t normal.”
Of course it wasn’t. There was nothing normal about the hooved creature inside me.
Tears burned down my face. This was all too much.
I squeezed my eyes shut and there we were again, silhouettes of Giovanni and me, my arm in his as he helped me out of the hospital bed. His head turned, watching my face as he handed me a bag of marzapane.
How I’d smiled and thanked him for the gift, cooing over his patient understanding and forgiveness. How he’d let me do so without a blush.
In the forest, the horse shrieked.
“I don’t think there’s time to fetch the doctor.” Her voice came as if through layers of cloth. “I don’t even think there’s time for me to go find your husband.”
I bit my lips against the spreading pain and felt myself sway, the room darkening for a breath.
Buona’s hands were on my arm. “You need to lie down.”
I groaned, leaning against her despite myself, my entire body trembling enough for my teeth to chatter. “I’m not leaving the room,” I gasped out.
She exhaled. “Fine.” Her grip on my arm was gone and then she was pulling the cushions from the two armchairs, placing them on the floor next to the fireplace before racing out of the room.
“I don’t want to do this,” I murmured. “I want to leave.”
I winced at another shriek from the forest. It sounded closer, as if the horse had leaped out of the recording and was now galloping toward this very room. “I don’t want to see Giovanni again. Or Emilia.”
I frowned. No, not Emilia. It was the other one, wasn’t it?
Buona.
The girl ran back into the room with a bedsheet and towels draped over her arm, an iron pot hanging from the other.
Buona placed the pot in a corner of the fireplace, where the flames were burning brightest, and then draped the bedsheet on the floor, over the cushions.
She motioned for me as the pressure began again and I found myself kneeling, my hands gripping the bedsheet as I rocked under the muscular current of pain. It pummeled me, ripping me from myself.
I drifted out onto a patch of cool darkness. Everything easing. Although I could hear a voice calling me, I ignored it and let it remain distant, there, with the worst of the pain.
“Sibilla.”
Someone was shaking me.
Why couldn’t I just be left alone?
“You need to stay conscious, Sibilla. Can you hear me? You need to come back.”
More shaking, and now the voice was pulling me, returning me to the bright heat of pain. I opened my eyes.
Golden hair hovered above me, glowing in the fire’s light. I’d known it. I’d known she was waiting here, somewhere, ready to show herself when I was most vulnerable.
“Emilia,” I said.
“It’s Buona, Sibilla. You know me. Come, have a sip of wine.”
She shifted and the gold tarnished and it was the girl who was there, bringing a glass to my lips. I tried to turn my head away, but she held it in place with her other hand.
“You need more strength to continue,” she said. “You’re weak as a puppy. Drink.”
I did as she said because I had no other choice, and the wine was the sweetest thing I’d ever tasted. I wanted to gulp it down, but the pain allowed me just three sips before starting again, and this time something had changed. The pressure had settled low and heavy. There was a finality to it that my entire body recognized.
“I think it’s time,” I gasped. “It wants to get out.”
I heard the ruffling of clothing as Buona lifted my wool dress and pulled down my slip.
“You’ll have to push now,” the girl said. “You’re as ready as you’re bound to be.”
I let out a strangled sob.
“Don’t fret, Sibilla. I’ve helped dozens of goats do this and I’m sure it’s no different.”
It didn’t matter because it was happening, now, whether I was ready or not, whether Buona knew what she was doing or not.
On the next crest of pain, I did what my body was demanding of me and bore down.
“That’s good!” Buona said. “Keep pushing!”
A ringing started in my ears, but no, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t in my ears or even in my head. It was coming from a distance, the sound of bells. Someone was ringing bells.
With a cry, I pushed again, using the next wave of pressure, and burning blades seemed to be tearing at me.
“I can’t do it!” I said.
“Yes, of course you can, and you will.”
And she was right, for my body had slipped out of all of my control, reins snatched from my hands as it galloped ahead with what it needed to do.
I pushed through flames over and over again.
Screams ripped out of me, and I could hear them race and crash through the entire property, but they seemed to warp by the second, so that it was no longer my voice shattering itself against the trees and the mountainside. The voice of another woman, that other woman, shrieking her pain.
“One more, Sibilla, just one,” Buona said.
I stole a breath and pushed once more.
Like a taut thread, the pain stretched until it could not sustain itself any longer and then snapped.
“Oh!” Buona said.
I gasped at the sudden and overwhelming relief, my arms and legs shaking and then collapsing like a marionette’s limbs, my back and head and chest soaked with sweat.
It was over. This horridness, at least, was finished.
I allowed my eyes to flutter shut for a moment as I let Buona deal with the cord, breathing deeply, reveling in the calm, the stillness I felt throughout all of me. For the first time in months, my body was my own. There’d be no more kicking hooves.
And I realized the tranquility wasn’t just within me, either.
Outside, the horse’s cries and the ringing bells had stopped.
With a small coo, the girl stood and wrapped a towel around the creature I’d birthed before she began to gently rub it. It didn’t cry, as infants were meant to do, but instead let out a snorting cough and a mewl.
“You were right,” Buona said, smiling. “It’s a boy.”
I turned away. It might have been male, but I knew it was not a boy and so did she.
I listened to her walk to the fireplace and drag out the iron pot.
“We’ll just give you a quick warm wash, winter child. Leave you glowing for your mother and then I’m rather certain you would like your first meal.”
My lips twisted at the thought.
“Oh, he’s perfect, Sibilla.”
I turned to look at her once again. “You don’t need to keep lying.”
“What do you mean?” The towel in her arms moved in all manner of odd angles as she wiped at what it contained.
“That . . . thing is not perfect. It’s an abomination.”
Buona frowned, shaking her head. “You’re wrong. He’s a beautiful child, look.”
She walked toward me. I tried to shift away, but my exhausted body was not fast enough to move before she knelt beside me.
“Look at your winter child.” She chuckled. “A proper one, too, born in a snowfall.”
Mottled, bruised pink was the first thing I saw, a scrunch of wet, swollen features that resembled a newborn’s but were not. A black patch of coarse hair covered the crown of its head.
An arm moved out of the towel’s confines and there was a small dark hoof where a hand should have been. I’d known it would be there, I’d expected it, and still I felt a bitter wave of nausea at its sight.
I winced as I pulled myself up, using my elbows and my forearms because the muscles in my stomach refused to cooperate.
“Give it here,” I said and reached for the towel.
Buona hesitated, her hands tightening for an instant, but she did what I said.
Deep watery eyes looked up at me as I brought the bundle closer, hooves clopping together as the creature shifted. I pulled the towel away from its body.
It was a small thing, not the rosy, porcelain-skinned cherub that it should have been, and its splotched pink flesh was taking on an edge of gray even as I watched. Its legs, too, ended in hooves. The ones that had kicked out at me with such anger.
Yet I saw no anger in it now. It was just defenseless and pitiful, shifting against my hands. What could it possibly do to me?
I brushed its cheek with my fingertips, watching it watch my movements. It was softer than I expected. Warmer.
And then it opened its mouth, folds coming into its face as it scrunched up its features in the prelude to a cry.
The sound that came out of it chilled the sweat covering my body. I’d been wrong. It could still hurt me.
It was a whinny.
“Oh, Dio,” I said.
Buona chuckled. “He’s probably just hungry.”
The cry hitched up and a snort came into it, a horrid puff of air that made my hands shake. Its hooves clicked together, its mouth widening as it shrieked with the same panic I’d been hearing since we’d arrived at the mill.
I couldn’t bear it. Not when it was right here, coming from something that had been inside me.
“Stop,” I said. I shook the bundle lightly to try to snap the sound in two, but the movement just made it louder.
“Sibilla,” Buona said.
“Please, stop,” I said.
But the creature kicked out, hitting the air with its four hooves, and kept up its piercing shriek.
My heart’s beating was painful as I clapped a hand against its mouth. I expected the sharp nip of teeth, but there was just warm wetness.
“Sibilla!” Buona said. She lunged forward and grasped at the bundle, trying to rip it from my hands.
But I held on, because I knew if she took it, she’d allow it to continue, and then the crying would never end. Neither the radio nor Mother’s waltz would be able to drown it out. I could feel the growing power in the screams—they would seep into everything.
“Let me have him,” Buona said. “I’ll take him into another room so you don’t have to hear him.”
I almost laughed. As if a door and some walls could keep that horrid sound at bay.
I pressed my hand harder against the creature’s mouth, trying to muffle the shrieks. All I wanted was for it to be quiet. If it would just stop making that noise I could think and decide—
“Stop, Sibilla!”
The girl leaned into me, pushing an elbow into my chest as she tried to pull the bundle toward her. I felt my grip slip. My hand slid from the being’s mouth and the sound surged through the room. Buona began to stand, readying to give herself the leverage she needed to take the creature with her, and I did the first thing I could think of. I shoved my shoulder into her.
She tipped backward, releasing the bundle, the ragged hem of her trouser ripping where it’d caught under her shoe. She grunted as her head struck the wooden edge of the armchair and she landed with a clatter of limbs. She made no attempt to move or stand.
The creature gulped in a breath and renewed its cry.
“Enough, please!”
But it wouldn’t obey. Its screeching tore at my mind, I could feel it scraping my thoughts to strips. I had to stop it. Had to.
I pulled the towel over the creature, trying to at least muffle the sound. Small hooves struck at my hand through the fabric as I pressed down, willing it to silence.
“Just be quiet,” I said, closing my eyes. “For a few minutes, that’s all. Give me some peace.”
It felt like hours, but the noise did begin to weaken and then, finally, it stopped altogether. The hooves settled. Stillness descended on the room like the warmest, heaviest of blankets. I exhaled and felt the knots in my muscles starting to dissolve.
That was all I’d wanted.
I shifted the bundle from my arms and placed it on the floor, pulling the towel away from the creature’s face so that it could breathe untroubled as it slept. Once it woke again, I’d have to think of how I would feed it, for I’d not be latching it on to my breast. The mere thought of those hooves kicking at my bare flesh made me wince.
The room tilted as I made to stand and I had to stop and wait for the pinpricks of darkness to fade from my eyes before I could continue. My legs shook, thighs aching like I’d run through all of Torino, but they held me as I crossed to the piano and eased my sore body down onto the bench. I placed my hands on the keys but did not press down, for I was loathe to break the silence so dearly won, even for music. I just wanted to remain in this moment, alone and safe, for as long as I could.
I started the waltz without making a sound. Nothing ached or stung any longer. Everything was just fine.
The gunshot in the woods jolted a real chord from my hands.
Behind me, I heard Buona beginning to stir.
The small refuge of silence I’d managed to create cracked around me.
“Sibilla?” the girl said.
I remained as I was, trying to delay the moment when I’d be dragged back to noise and pain and lies and to whatever that gunshot meant.
“Where’s the child?”
I sighed and motioned to where it lay. “It’s sleeping. Don’t wake it up.”
Clothes rustled as the girl began to crawl to the bundle I’d left on the floor. I could see her from the corner of my eye as she pulled the creature into her arms, touching its face, grabbing one of its hooves, pressing a hand to its chest, each movement growing more frantic.
“What did you do?” she said, much too loudly.
What a stupid girl. She’d get it screaming again if she kept that up. “I told you it’s sleeping, leave it be.”
She shook her head, clutching at the creature. “He’s dead, Sibilla. You killed him!”
Dio, I was so tired of the lies. What was the point of any of them now, but especially of one like this one?
I heard rapid footsteps in the corridor, heading toward the music room, and all of me bristled. The last person in this world I wanted to see right now was the liar I’d married.
I could still hear how he’d spoken of me to Emilia. The laughter they’d shared at my expense.
Had anything he’d ever told me been true? Had he ever loved me at all, at least at the start, or had I just been the perfect dull-enough woman to cook his meals and keep his home while he did as he pleased?
“Keep him out,” I said to Buona. “He’s not welcome in here.”
But the girl remained where she was and then it was too late, for Giovanni was at the doorway. His pistol rested against his thigh.
“This door should be closed and locked, Buona,” he said as he walked inside. He glanced at me and then at the girl, a frown marring his forehead as he took in the stained bedsheet on the floor, the iron pot. “What’s happened?”
Buona let out a sob, drawing my husband to her.
Giovanni made a strange, strangled sound I’d never heard before. I swallowed, for I could imagine what he was seeing. I’d had weeks to grow as used to the idea as I could manage and the sight of that creature had still brought waves of nausea.
But at least he wasn’t pretending not to notice its unholy deformities like Buona. A small blessing.
“Oh, Gran Dio,” he said. “What is this monstrosity? Sibilla, what did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. Of course he’d blame me for it. “It was this place and that girl.”
“No!” Buona said. “I didn’t do this!”
I shifted on the piano bench until I could see both of them fully. “Really? You’re going to deny that you were plying me with concoctions of who knows what plants? Making me ill, twisting the child in my womb into something unspeakable?”
The girl blinked, sending tears down her face. “Sibilla, the teas I made for you were just to calm you. You were hearing things that weren’t there and becoming so overwrought with everything that I feared for you and the child. It was nothing but bugleherb and—”
Her eyes widened as her gaze landed on something hanging from Giovanni’s woolen coat pocket. She snatched it.
“Where did you get this?” Buona held up a blue cap. A splotch of dark red stained an entire side of it.
“One of the trespassers,” he said, his voice a husk. He still had the bundle in his arms, and his face had lost so much color, I expected his legs to buckle at any moment. “I saw him in the woods.”
“But why is there blood on it?” she said, her voice breathy with fear.
“I-I called for him and he started running. I fired a warning shot into the sky and he tripped. Fell and hit his head.”
“No,” Buona gasped. “Where is he? Is he alive?”
Giovanni’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”
“Answer me!”
“He’s dead.”
Buona groaned as if she’d received a blow.
For the first time, I saw the suspicion that had been weighing me down for weeks cross Giovanni’s face.
“Who was that man to you?” he said.
But the girl didn’t look at him, starting across the room instead, darting toward the door. As sure-footed and quick as she was, Giovanni blocked her path with a violent ease I knew too well. The bundle shifted in his arms. My entire body tensed, awaiting the renewed whinnying, the snorting. But the creature slept on.
“Girl, you need to answer, this instant,” Giovanni said.
Buona tried to go around him, but he shifted, taking a step forward so that she was forced to retreat. She pressed the bloodied cap to her chest with a sob.
“Who was he?”
She shook her head, her fingers squeezing into the wool, staining themselves with red.
Giovanni gripped her arm. “Who was he, Buona?”
“My brother!” she yelled. “He was my brother!”
I frowned.
“Your brother was one of the trespassers?” Giovanni said. “He helped in sabotaging the mill?”
She yanked her arm away. “No, of course he didn’t. He was innocent, he didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Oh, yes, so innocent he was running around our land, freely knocking on this room’s very door,” I said. “I tried to warn you. I did tell you she was involved.”
“No! He didn’t do anything, I swear it. And neither did I.” She shook her head once more. “He isn’t . . . wasn’t well. He was born different, easily confused, but he would never have done something like that. He was so gentle.” Her voice cracked and she pressed a hand to her mouth.
I scoffed. Were we really supposed to believe that? “What was he doing wandering about here, then? Traipsing through our property as if he owned it?”
“It wasn’t his fault. I brought him with me on the day I arrived. I couldn’t leave him alone because he doesn—didn’t know how to care for himself. So I hid him in the old stables.” She wiped at her eyes. “I needed the job and you wouldn’t have given it to me if I’d told you about him.”
Giovanni ran a trembling hand through his hair, moving the bundle again. My teeth gritted together.
“Will you put that creature down?” I said. “You’ll wake it and I can’t bear its noise.”
He flinched and turned to look at me, frowning, his eyes searching my features as if he had not the slightest idea of who he was looking at. I would have liked to claw that expression off his face. He had no right to it.
“Put it down,” I said.
He pinched his lips together but, for once, he did as I said and laid the bundle down on the nearest armchair.
Buona took the opportunity to lunge for the door again, but she wasn’t quick enough. He gripped her arm before she could cross the threshold and pulled her back.
“Enough,” he said. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell us exactly what’s been going on here.”
“I’ve already told you! I hid my brother and kept him quiet through the day so that no one would see him.” She turned to look at me. “I did it with that same tea I gave you, Sibilla. I didn’t harm anybody. Please, I just want to see him.”
Did she really expect help from me, after everything she had done? “And Piero? How is he involved?”
“Piero?” she said.
“Why did you pretend not to know him? What was that whispered conversation all about the day he came to visit?”
She shrugged and gave a shuddering sigh. “He knew about my brother and he wanted me to tell you, that’s all. And I should have. I should have told you that day that you followed him into the woods, Sibilla, but I didn’t know how. I’d already been hiding him for so long by then . . .”
I chuckled. I couldn’t help myself. She was quite the little actress, but she’d not fool me again. “You’re a liar.”
Giovanni turned to me. “Sibilla—”
“She might have you in the grip of her charms but I can see right through her lies.”
“Her charms? What in Heaven’s name are you talking about?”
No, he’d not do this to me again. Try to convince me I hadn’t seen what I’d seen. “I heard the two of you talking, and in a very private manner. Buona telling you that it couldn’t wait any longer. Insisting that it, whatever it was, had to be now.”
“Oh, Sibilla.” The girl took a step toward me, her hands held out as if in supplication. Her face gleamed with tears. “I was asking him to call the doctor again. You weren’t well, you’re still not, and you needed to be watched.”
The truth came to me all at once, hitting me with such force that I felt myself recoil, my back hitting the piano.
I understood now why they kept pretending, why Giovanni was going along with her treachery. He’d even said the words himself.
How had it taken me so long to realize it?
It had been a lie, all of it. Cleverly planned.
Who had it been who had told me about Dottore Lupponi’s letter, a letter I did not see? Who had pushed me to find the “truth”? What evidence did I have of what Giovanni had claimed about the patent?
They’d arranged everything between the two of them. There were no trespassers. There was just them. Even this nonsense with the brother had to be staged, to confuse me even more.
“That’s been your plan all along,” I said, turning to Giovanni. “The mad wife, locked safely and conveniently out of the way.”
His face twisted under his deepening frown.
“The entire charade of the horse, of the oaks. The broken mill parts.” I scoffed. “You’ve probably been planning this since the ordeal with Emilia, when I became too troublesome for you.” I almost smiled at the way he winced. “And now this place, so removed from everything, has given you the perfect opportunity to put the plan to work. Have your wife committed and you’re free to do as you please. You even found a pretty and eager witness to all of my madness.”
Buona tried to get closer to me, but I stood and she took a step back. The room swayed so that I had to grip the piano to steady myself. “She can help you with that creature now, too, so you don’t need me for anything at all.”
My breath caught as another thought slammed into me. If they’d managed to deceive me with the rest, they could have also found a way to do so with the child.
But no, they couldn’t have done such a thing, could they? Would they have been so vicious?
I started toward the bundle.
“What are you doing?” Giovanni said and now he came to stand in my path.
“I need to see what’s in there.”
“No, Sibilla.”
My eyes widened. That was all the confirmation I needed.
It had been the two of them, then, they’d tricked me into thinking there was something wrong with my son. That he had hooves and made inhuman sounds and I’d fallen for it. Gran Dio, they’d made me feel disgust at his birth. All to ensure no one would ever find me sane.
There were no depths to which they wouldn’t sink to get what they desired.
I looked from one to the other, shaking my head. “But how did you do it? How did the two of you manage something like that?”
“You need to calm yourself,” Giovanni said. “You’re overwrought. No one did anything.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t take you at your word,” I said. I stepped past him.
He grabbed both my arms and pulled me back. “Stop.”
“Get your hands off me.” I jerked forward, trying to get loose, but his grip just tightened. “Let me see! He’s my child.”
“Grab the baby,” Giovanni said and Buona moved to do just that.
No, I couldn’t let her. She would take my son where I’d not find him. I’d never see him again.
“Don’t touch him.”
Her eyes flicked to me, yet she didn’t stop.
“Buona!” I kicked out, trying to find some leverage that would help me rip free of Giovanni’s grip, but my wet slippers slid on the wood. My hands became fists that could strike nothing.
“Leave him! Don’t you dare touch him!”
“It’s for the best,” Buona said, grabbing the child. “Truly.”
“Give him to me! He’s mine!”
Giovanni spun me so that I could no longer see what was happening, gripping my forearms. “Sibilla, enough. It’ll do no one any good for you to see it. The child is dead.”
“Liar!” I tried to reach his face, claw at it with my bare hands until he released me, until he couldn’t cry the false tears I saw glittering in his eyes, until he couldn’t tell me any more lies. But he held on.
“You’re not well,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.”
I felt a growl rumbling in my chest. “You’ll do nothing with me! I don’t want you near me or my child, do you understand? You’ve taken enough of my life.”
Golden hair blazed across my mind.
My head felt as if it would crack open. Rage, a kind I’d never felt before, made my very blood impossible to stand as it burned through my veins.
“Do you have any idea how much I hate you?” I said. “You’re a liar. You’ve caused all of this, you’ve destroyed my life, and now you’re taking another child from me! You’ve taken all of them, everything from me!”
Giovanni let out a sob. He shook with it, but he didn’t release me.
“Please,” he murmured. “Sibilla, I am sorry.”
I spat in his face.
“Signora, is everything all right? I heard a gunshot.”
It was Piero’s voice, coming from somewhere in the house.
Behind me, Buona gasped. From the corner of my eye, I saw her quick shape as she ran past us, once again toward the door, clutching my son to her chest.
“Fetch the carabinieri, Piero!” she said.
“No, stop,” Giovanni said, releasing me, turning toward her.
“They’re both mad!” Buona shouted. “They killed my brother and their child!”
I didn’t see when Giovanni pulled the pistol from his belt.
“Stop!” he called again, but the girl didn’t listen.
The shot rang out as her hand touched the doorframe and she lurched forward, stumbling out into the corridor like someone had shoved her. Her legs held her for just a few seconds more, her head turning, her eyes meeting mine one last time.
She still gripped the child in her arms as she fell.
Footsteps thundered down the corridor and Piero appeared at the door, gaze locked on the girl’s body.
“What—?”
The next shot knocked the words from his mouth. He gasped, a gurgling, wet sound. Blood bloomed across his chest as his legs slid from under him.
My breathing was ragged in my ears. I scrambled backward. My feet slipped on something, the soiled bedsheet or the cushions, and I felt myself falling, knees landing with a thud against the wood. I started to shake as all of me fought against what I’d just seen, unable to grasp onto anything except the pure animal need to run. But there was no way out except past Giovanni. And I couldn’t leave my son.
The shots still lingered in the air as Giovanni lowered the pistol against his thigh. He shuddered. Even from the back, I could see him panting.
I pressed my lips together to keep from screaming.
“You have to know I didn’t want any of this to happen,” he finally said, voice splintering. He turned to look at me and his face was contorted under the weight of his tears. “I didn’t have any plans to be rid of you, as you claimed. None of this was a trick. I know you don’t believe me, but I wanted us to be happy here, to have a new start and raise a child together. I thought we deserved it, after everything that happened, but nothing has worked in this cursed place. Not the slightest thing. And now it’s too late.”
He walked closer and knelt in front of me and for an instant I saw the young man I had fallen in love with that morning in the sweets shop, staring out as if through the bars of a cage. Just for an instant.
Behind him, in the doorway, the familiar black figure slipped into view. It dug its claws into the wooden frame as the grinding of its teeth filled the room.
Giovanni tried to smile but his lips wouldn’t obey him. “You don’t have to worry though. I promise you we’ll be all right. And this is one promise I can keep.”
The figure jerked forward.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wrapping my arms around myself, and painted the image of my mother’s piano keys across the black expanse of my mind.
Something cold pressed against the center of my forehead.
I played the first chord of the waltz.