Chapter 65

ALESSANDRA AND I ARRIVE back at my apartment. I am not entirely blinded but I still feel the overwhelming need for rest. While she sets up her laptop on the harvest table behind the couch, I swallow another sleeping pill. Lying down on the bed, I quickly fall into a deep sleep.

* * *

I see Grace.

Grace is standing all alone in the center of a gondola, her long dark hair draping her pale face and shoulders like an angel. She’s wearing a black gown covered with sequins. The gown doesn’t match the rich glossy black finish on the narrow boat, so much as it blends into it, becomes one with it. Wrapped around her wedding finger is her engagement ring. The square cut diamond sparkles brilliantly in the daylight.

The canal is calm, the water as clean and clear as newly drawn bathwater.

Hers is the only boat on the water while the old buildings and stone canal banks are empty of people. Empty of life. Framing Grace is an arching stone bridge and as the dream progresses, Grace begins to float backwards, under the bridge. I’m not in a boat. I am treading water. I find myself floating calmly at first, but then desperately towards my fiancée, my hands outstretched like I’m trying to grab onto her.

But she’s moving away from me far too fast, her boat sinking, filling with the clear canal water, her black-gowned body being swallowed up by Venice.

I too am sinking no matter how hard I try to stay afloat by kicking my feet and slapping at the water with my hands and arms. Then I am underwater and so is Grace.

We lock eyes underneath the silent veil of water. Her expression hasn’t changed at all since she began to sink and drown. She just peers at me with her blue eyes and a slightly open mouth.

I can’t breathe.

Can’t. Breathe.

The more I sink, the more my lungs constrict and I feel the need to open my mouth, take a breath. But I know that if I do it, I will drown. I will die.

Grace stares at me. Into my eyes. She knows I’m about to die. She knows it.

“Breathe, Nick,” she says through the water. “Breathe.”

I do it.

I do what my Grace tells me to do.

I. Breathe.

And I die.