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It was too much information all at once. “Giusy. I am so confused. I’m not clearing anyone’s name. I’m not Nancy Drew or Jessica Fletcher. I’m a broke-ass woman who has to go home to the US as soon as possible to fill out unemployment forms for my twenty employees whose livelihoods I’ve taken away and then battle my husband for custody of the daughter I can’t afford to raise.”
Her expression hardened. “You are ungrateful. Everything you have in America is because of that woman. You were allowed to run your own business in America. You were famous on the cover of magazines. And now you whine. You are an American. People will listen to you if you speak up about Serafina.”
“I know nothing about her.”
“I have things I can share with you. I have learned there is more to the story. I have heard it from some of the older women in town. I do not believe she was actually a witch. I believe Serafina was a healer like a doctor.”
“She wasn’t a doctor. She was a housewife. You definitely have the wrong woman.”
“No, I do not. You have the wrong information. You are an asshole, Sara Marsala. You know that?”
“I’ve been told that a time or two,” I admitted.
“I promised your aunt Rose I would help you, but she also promised me something.”
“What?” I asked through my exhaustion.
“She told me if I helped you I could get a little bit of the money, a small percentage of the sale from your land. I need that money. My hotel is in debt. I have to sell it, but to do that I need to hire a lawyer and a good real estate agent and I need cash. I’ve been counting on helping you.”
Giusy’s information seemed tenuous and yet she was so earnest and passionate about all of it.
I softened my approach. “I’ll look at the report again when we get down the mountain. Back at the hotel. I can’t make any promises. But I will read it again. OK, Giusy? But everything you said about selling your hotel and finding a lawyer and a real estate agent. I need to do that too to talk about the deed and the land and whether any of it is real and if my family still owns it after so long. Can we just head back?” The sun was climbing higher in the sky and I was sweating out the dregs of last night’s wine. “I don’t even know what the land is worth. It could be nothing.”
“It’s a big plot of land at the base of the mountain. It’s been used for grazing by the farm next door. But lately there has been a foreign developer sniffing around. He wants to build a big classy resort down there with a golf course and swimming pools and a fancy restaurant. You could get good money, but only if you can prove you really own it, that Serafina truly owned it.”
Giusy knew she had my attention with all this money talk. She quickly packed up the picnic basket and started to walk down the mountain, forcing me to follow.
I grabbed her arm. “I want to do right by my aunt and my family. But I thought I was coming here to find a nice place to spread Rose’s ashes and say some prayers to a god I don’t believe in and let her rest in peace.” I didn’t realize tears were rolling down my cheeks until one of them landed on my bare arm. “Please, help me do that.”
“The money won’t hurt you either.” She turned to face me head-on. “You need it.”
“No, of course it wouldn’t hurt.” Why mince words? “But it still makes no sense to me why a generations-old grudge against my relative has anything to do with the sale of land right now.”
“Welcome to Sicily. Holding and maintaining grudges is our national pastime. It’s our golf.” She sped up on the trail ahead of me.
The way down was much faster than the way up and the town had fallen asleep by the time we were back. Siesta was something Rosie would have approved of, a mandatory nap in the middle of the day, a public edict to rest for an entire afternoon. Whenever Carla and I were cranky as kids she always told us, You just need a nap, a crap, and a snack.
Once we were close to the hotel, I checked my phone for service, but it was barely at one bar. I hadn’t talked to my daughter since I’d arrived and I needed to find a way to get in touch. I also needed to call my sister so Carla could do her Carla thing where she said all the right words to help shove my anxiety back into a box.
But first I reassured Giusy: “Let me think this through, OK?” She nodded, suddenly speechless, maybe recalculating her plan. I had no doubt that Giusy was a woman who always had another plan at the ready. She disappeared through the door behind the check-in counter.
I couldn’t worry about her feelings. I hardly knew her. I tried to push her and everything she’d told me out of my mind as I walked back out of the hotel to take a short stroll to try to find phone service. In the piazza the pasticceria door was slightly ajar, though the windows were still shuttered. I knocked, pushed it open slightly, and begged for an espresso from a bored old woman who perched on a stool behind the counter. I sipped it quietly on a bench, my phone still useless.
Back at the hotel I climbed the stairs to my room, grasping the handrail for dear life as I wobbled up. My legs shook from the day’s exertion and the hangover still dripping out of my body. I once read an article that explained that hangovers came on in waves, peaking exactly twelve hours after you stopped drinking. Surely the last wave had already passed.
Someone was rushing down the stairs ahead of me. I heard them before they slammed into me, knocking me hard into the wall.
“Hey,” I yelled.
By the time I got my bearings there was only a shadow at the bottom of the stairs. It was definitely a man, so slight he could have been a teenager. He wore a dark jacket with a hood pulled over the top of his head. The front door of the hotel slammed.
The door to my room was slightly ajar. I nudged it open with the toe of my sneaker and gasped at the scene in front of me.
The place wasn’t exactly spotless when I left, but now it looked like something out of a movie where a room has been ransacked by the FBI. The floor lamp next to the bed had been tipped over, the bust of Julius Caesar was shattered on the floor, the television had been smashed, and my suitcase had been flipped upside down. My clothes covered every available surface. A well-worn bra hung from the chandelier, which felt a little too theatrical. I perched on the edge of the bed to survey the damage and started to cackle. Everything about the past twenty-four hours had been ridiculous. But then the laugh caught in my throat, and I slid off the comforter onto the floor. I crawled to the armoire, my heart pounding.
It was still there. The relief felt like a drug. But then why wouldn’t it still be here? Who would steal a cardboard box full of my dead aunt’s ashes? I gnawed on my lip to keep my tears at bay as I placed my hands on top of it, and again, I swore it felt warm to the touch.
“What have you gotten us into, Rosie?”
