I close my eyes and imagine the same warmth sliding over my skin. The AC at the institute was always turned too high. Even now—seven months after my release—I can still remember that bone-deep cold. It used to wake me in the middle of the night, shivering so badly my jaw ached.
I pull my cell out of the back pocket of my jean shorts. A notification has popped up, alerting me that my flight is on time and will depart in two hours and forty-five minutes. I shimmy my shoulders in excitement.
Finally, I think, sliding my phone back into my pocket. Time to go. There are still two weeks left in July, and I’m planning to live it up with my two best friends in Italy. Mara and Harper have been there all summer, doing an arts program, and I’m finally able to join them. I yank my suitcase off the bed, grab my tote bag from the back of my bedroom door, and hurry down the stairs. Dolce vita!
My parents wait for me at the front door. I offered to get an Uber, but “Dan Hubbard won’t let any daughter of his head to the airport alone!” (My dad actually said this while clapping me on the shoulder—God, so embarrassing.) He took the morning off so he could drive me to Bradley International, but Mom couldn’t get anyone to cover her morning classes, so she’s seeing me off here.
It would’ve been easier if we’d said goodbye last night. I can practically feel the nerves vibrating off Mom’s skin.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Her hands are at her neck, sliding her pearl necklace through her fingers. She pinches each pearl, counting them like they’re rosary beads. “Daddy and I have been talking, and it’s just that Italy is so far away . . .”
“Don’t worry, I told her you can handle it,” Dad adds, throwing me a wink. He puts a hand over Mom’s to keep her from rubbing the finish off her pearls.
“You’re sure it’s not too soon?” Mom asks. We look alike—same long auburn hair, round face, and full mouth—but now her lips are pulled tight over her teeth, making her look older than she is. The minuscule lines on her forehead are out in full force.
“I promise, I’ll be fine.” I lean in, planting a kiss on her cheek. “Mara and Harper will be with me the whole time, and I know not to push myself if I start feeling out of it.”
Those are her words. She’s repeated the phrase about a million times over the last week. Just don’t push yourself . . . And that’s when she’s not watching me like a hawk. Monitoring my eating. Making sure I don’t sleep too late. Casually checking what I’m reading, just to make sure it’s not something too “upsetting.”
I swear, last week she was about to psychoanalyze some dumb dream I had about a missing rabbit, but Dad stopped her before she could get the words out. Thank God.
“Well . . .” Mom still looks unsure. “Just promise to call.”
“Of course.”
She wraps her arms around me before I can pull away, hugging me firmly. She’s too thin—I can tell she hasn’t been eating since I got back—and her spine digs into my fingers, each bone a sharp point. “Be safe.”
I give her a tight squeeze before wiggling out of her grip, waving over my shoulder as I head for the door.
I step outside, and the weight of her worry falls from my shoulders, like a discarded sweater. The sun is warm on my bare legs, reminding me that, before long, I’ll have Italian sun and Italian streets and Italian boys to keep me company.
I tip my head back, inhaling deeply. The sky is achingly blue. I want to drink it in, hold it inside me. My luck is finally changing. It’s been seven long months since I left the institute behind, and, still, this feels like my first real moment of freedom.
Italia, here I come.
* * *
• • •
The Italian heat hits me like a wall.
The airport doors whoosh closed behind me, taking all the manufactured cold air with them. I scoop the hair off the back of my neck with one hand, gasping. My legs and underarms have already gone sticky, and I’m starting to feel a little jet-lagged. Eight hours cramped in coach will do that, I suppose. A dull headache pounds through my skull.
I grab my suitcase and start wheeling toward the curb, eyes peeled for a taxi, when light brown curls and a blond pixie cut catch my eye.
I release a shocked laugh. “Harper? Mara?”
Their heads swivel around.
“Berkley!” Harper squeals. She’s wearing oversized Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday–style sunglasses that cover half her face, and a dazzling smile unfolds beneath them. “We thought you’d never get here.”
I drop my suitcase and pull Harper into a hug. “I can’t believe you came all the way out to the airport to pick me up!”
“Of course we did,” Mara says, fanning herself. She’s somehow managed to keep her skin pale as porcelain despite the torturous Italian sunshine. “What are friends for?”
“You guys are the best.” I move in to hug her next. She seems to stiffen as I wrap my arms around her shoulders, but when I let her go she tucks a lock of white-blond hair behind her ears, smiling, and I figure I imagined the pause of awkwardness.
“How was your trip?” Mara asks. “We were so worried when your flight got delayed.”
“Were you?” The plane was held on the runway for about an hour before takeoff, but after that everything was fine. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”
“Are you kidding? We were practically yelling at the woman at the information desk, but it’s like she didn’t even care.” Harper rolls her eyes dramatically. “Italians hate giving a straight answer to anything, you’ll see. She kept being like, Maybe it’ll land in the next twenty minutes? Maybe it’ll be tomorrow? Who knows?”
I laugh, sure that they’re joking. They both smile back, but Harper can’t stop tapping her foot, and Mara keeps winding and unwinding her fingers. They were actually worried.
I clear my throat. “Well, I hope you didn’t have to wait for long . . .”
Harper waves my apology away with a flick of her hand. “Oh! It was totally fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“We just didn’t want you to be freaked,” Mara adds. “Those airplane seats can be so claustrophobic . . . Anyway, you’re going to love it here. The students in our program are really so nice.”
“You’ll meet them all at dinner tomorrow night.” Harper’s eyes go to my suitcase. “Is that all you packed?”
I’d been so proud of myself for getting all my clothes into a single carry-on, but now the bag seems comically small, especially for two weeks in a foreign country. “Should I have brought more?”
Mara shakes her head. “No, no—don’t worry about it. Harper brought her entire closet, obviously, but I packed light, too. You’ll be fine.”
“I just like options,” Harper says, adjusting her sunglasses. “I’m competing with Italian women here. I need to make sure I look my best at the clubs.”
“Although, we obviously don’t have to go out clubbing if you don’t want to,” Mara cuts in. “It’s no big deal!” I frown—I like going out just as much as they do—but Harper takes my suitcase before I can respond and starts pulling it down the sidewalk.
“Oh, right, of course not,” she adds. “Mara and I’ve been dancing practically every night this week, so it’s probably time for a break.”
“She’s such a bad influence,” Mara says. “I’ve barely gotten any studying done the entire trip.”
Harper rolls her eyes. “We’re in Italy.”
“And I’m premed. I can’t just take two months off.” Mara turns back to me. “We can just take it easy tonight—dinner and wine back at the apartment.” She glances at Harper. “I mean, neither of us can show our faces at Galleria anytime soon.”
Harper bursts out laughing. “Oh my God! I still can’t believe the bartender said that to you . . .”
“I’m pretty sure I could see his nipples through that tank top.”
“So gross
! Did you—”
“We don’t have to stay in because of me,” I cut in. “I brought plenty of stuff to wear. Going out could be fun!”
“If you want. But seriously, we don’t have to do anything you’re not comfortable with.” Mara lifts her arm to wave down the zippy white taxi that just rounded the corner. “We’re happy to do something low-key. No big deal.”
It’s the second time she’s said no big deal in the last five minutes. It feels like something they talked about before I got here. If Berkley gets weird, just act like it’s no big deal. Pretend everything’s normal.
Which means they think I’m still sick. They’re worried they’ll be the ones who have to clean up after me when I lose it.
The taxi skids to a stop. Harper leans through the front window, saying something in Italian. Mara loads my suitcase into the trunk and climbs into the backseat. I slide in beside her, and she grabs my hand.
“We’re going to have so much fun,” she says, squeezing my fingers.
Harper sits next to me, pulling the door shut. “Oh my God, I can’t wait for you to see the apartment. It’s to die for.”
“The place is insane,” Mara adds in an undertone. “You know how Harper loves a little drama? Well, she went a little overboard when she picked this place.”
“I can’t wait,” I say, relaxing. At least this feels like it’s supposed to. The three of us packed into the back of a taxi, giggling. This is what I’d been picturing all those months stuck in Connecticut, and it’s so right that I have to bite back a smile. My friends came all this way to greet me at the airport, after all. They didn’t have to do that.
It’s about an hour’s drive from the airport to the village. The taxi takes us down a wide road lined with dying sunflowers and cypress trees. Earlier in the year, the fields were probably beautiful, filled with bursts of yellow, but by now the unrelenting sun has turned most of the flowers brown, leaving miles of packed dirt and rocks where the plants have all died. The sky above the field is dotted with black.
“Something must’ve died,” Mara mutters, and I realize the black dots are crows. Hundreds of them. They get closer, wings outstretched as they land on a spot far off in the field. “That’s the only reason crows act like that.”
“Thank you, professor.” Harper pulls a compact out of her bag to check her makeup.
I lean partway across Harper’s lap to get a better look. But there are too many crows to see anything else in the field. They swarm together, wings overlapping wings, pointed beaks pecking at something just out of view.
And then the taxi zooms past, and I watch them grow smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror.
CHAPTER 3
The cab makes a sharp turn onto a cobblestone road, and Cambria appears, like a mirage. It’s a smaller town than I expected, all narrow streets and quaint squares and centuries-old towers. The crumbling stone village seems to rise out of the olive groves and wheat fields. Weeds grow out of windows and climb up walls. Everything is heavily coated in layers of dirt.
A cow with visibly protruding ribs stumbles, lazily, into the middle of the road, and the cabbie skids to a stop. He lays on the horn, swearing in Italian until the creature casts us a withering glance.
“The village is overrun with livestock,” Harper explains, wrinkling her nose. “It’s so gross.”
I watch the cow lazily trot away. “I don’t know. You don’t think they’re kind of sweet?”
“Say that after some wandering cow stops your taxi for the fortieth time,” Mara says, and Harper snickers.
One hairpin turn later and the cab skids to a stop in front of what appears to be an old church. The exterior is all stone arches and dirty stained-glass windows. A gargoyle leans over the double doors, staring down at our cab with wide, unblinking eyes.
Mara starts digging around for euros, while Harper and the cabdriver exchange pleasantries in Italian. I should offer to pay. I reach for my tote—
“We got this,” Harper says, waving my hand away.
I hesitate. “Really?”
“Definitely. Don’t even worry about it.”
It feels weird to let her pay, but I tell myself I’ll buy wine later to make up for it.
I swing my bag over my shoulder and dart across the street as the taxi peels away in a cloud of exhaust. It doesn’t occur to me that we’re headed for the church until Harper stops in front of the massive doors, a set of heavy keys dangling from her fingers.
I have to fight to keep my mouth from dropping open. “This is where we’re staying?”
“I know. Isn’t it amazing?” Harper pushes the door open with a grunt. “And it’s only, like, fifty euros a night. Crazy, right?”
“A ton of students got their own places,” Mara explains. “CART dorms are tiny.”
“And what’s the point of coming to Italy if you aren’t going to live among Italians?” Harper adds.
“Definitely,” I say. Cambria Art Institute’s summer program—or CART—is the reason they’re here. But it doesn’t sound like they’ve been going to many classes. Dinner with their professor tomorrow night is the first I’ve heard of an actual teacher.
“We’re pretty sure someone got murdered here and that’s the only reason we’re getting such a good deal,” Mara’s saying. She takes my suitcase from me and wheels it inside.
There are bikes and tennis shoes piled by the front door and a row of metal mailboxes hanging from the wall, crumpled envelopes overflowing from the cubbies. The heavy door swings shut behind us, making the floor tremble beneath my feet. It’s at least ten degrees colder in here, and the walls are so thick that they block sound completely.
We climb three flights of cracked stairs and end up in front of a doorway that’s a perfect miniature of the main entrance. A tiny gargoyle peers over the top of the stone arch as Harper fumbles with her keys.
“You ready?” she asks, but she throws the door open and herds me inside before I answer. The door slams shut behind us, and I’m entirely surrounded by walls painted a deep, bloody red.
“Looks like it was decorated by Dracula, doesn’t it?” Mara says, ushering me into the living room. She leans my suitcase near a leather settee and switches on a floor lamp. The sudden light makes me squint.
Velvet curtains cover the windows, blocking the setting sun. The furniture is all heavy and dark, with ornate carvings cut into the wood and elaborate images stitched into the fabric.
“Want the tour?” Harper claps her hands together, giddy.
I grin at her excitement, shoving my hands into my back pockets. “Lead the way.”
We check out her room first. It looks a lot like the living room—the same dark wood and heavy fabrics—but a four-poster bed sits against the middle of the wall, directly across from a wide balcony overlooking the entire city of Cambria. Clothes and shoes are strewn over every surface.
“You didn’t lie about bringing your whole closet,” I say.
“When in Rome—well, sort of,” Harper explains, pushing the balcony door open. A gasp of warm air sweeps into the room, carrying the comforting smell of bread and the sound of a woman below arguing with someone in Italian. “We drink espresso out here every morning. You’ll see.”
Mara’s room is up next. It’s not as big as Harper’s, and there’s no four-poster, but a fluffy white duvet covers her bed, and the Juliet balcony overlooks a massive field of sunflowers. Thick stacks of books crowd the walls, but the thin layer of dust on their covers tells me they haven’t been opened in weeks.
“Whoa,” I breathe, impressed. The setting sun has turned the field gold and fiery.
“I know,” Mara says from behind me. She casts a guilty look at her books. “You can see why studying hasn’t been at the top of my agenda.”
My room is through the last door at the end of a long, narrow hall. I try not to look disappointed whe
n Harper pushes the door open and flips on the light, but compared to the other two bedrooms, mine looks more like a closet. A narrow bed slouches against the far wall, and there’s a heavy wardrobe shoved into the corner. A fresco painting hangs above the bed, the sky filled with some gruesome battle scene between angels and devils while, on the ground below, all the humans scream in agony. A single girl has been tied to a stake, fire curling at her toes.
There’s a tiny plaque at the bottom of the painting. I lean closer to read it: Il Sacrificio di Lucia.
“That’s a famous story from Cambria’s history,” Harper explains. “Legend has it that the whole town went totally mental in the sixteenth century . . .”
“Nice, Harper,” Mara says, shaking her head. To me, she adds, “The town was sinning too much, according to historians. God punished them by causing a drought, keeping the crops from growing, that sort of thing.”
“That’s basically what I said,” Harper mutters.
“The town sacrificed Lucia as a penance, and they all lived happily ever after,” Mara finishes. “Cool story, right?”
“Charming.” I’m too focused on the extreme tininess of my room to listen to the story, and I guess a little bitterness slips into my voice. Mara and Harper share a look.
“We know it’s small,” Harper says apologetically.
“It’s just that we’ve been here all summer, so it made sense for us to take the bigger rooms,” Mara adds.
Suddenly I feel like a complete jerk. I wanted to come here, didn’t I? It’s not their fault there are only two good rooms. “It’s perfect, guys, really. Don’t worry about it.”
I plop down on the bed, determined to love my tiny room. It might be small, but the ceiling soars above me, and sure, there’s no balcony, but there is a flower box below the window. The flowers are all sort of dead, but still.
Last Rites Page 2
