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Throughout the rest of the call, Henry spoke tenderly about the island, about the long hike he’d gone on last night, and about the dinner he planned to cook for a friend tomorrow. Slowly, he lulled Janine into a sleepy and soft mood, and after they said they loved one another, she hung up, tucked herself between the covers, and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When Janine awoke the following morning, she padded downstairs to find Alyssa already up. She’d brewed a big pot of tea and had even run down the street to get baked goods, which now sat on a plate in the center of the kitchen table.
“And I got a big bag of lemons at the market!” Alyssa said, smiling proudly as she pointed at them. “I thought we could make fresh lemonade later.”
In front of Alyssa sat the enormous Italian art book, wide open, with Alyssa’s finger drawing line after line as she skimmed through.
“When did you get to work on that?” Janine asked, heading for the espresso machine.
“I couldn’t sleep very well,” Alyssa admitted. “It was like the book was calling to me.”
Janine laughed. “Has it said anything else?”
“Well…”
At the espresso machine, Janine spun on her heel and stared at her daughter. “You found a clue?”
Alyssa raised her shoulders. “I think I’m beginning to understand why Teresa gave it to us.”
Suddenly, Maggie appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, groggy and yawning herself out of slumber. “You’re still reading through that heinous book?”
Alyssa waved Maggie and Janine toward her, shimmering with pride. “I realized that toward the middle of the book are several tiny, tiny cut-outs.”
“Cut outs?” Maggie frowned.
Alyssa swept through the pages until, sure enough, she pointed at a tiny square cut-out, which had removed a single letter from a word. The cut was very precise, as though Teresa had used a very sharp, very small knife— perhaps an exacto.
“I’ve been looking up the words,” Alyssa explained, “to see which letters are left out. And on this piece of paper, I’ve been writing out the letters to see if they form some kind of word.”
Already, Alyssa had written down: s, s, o, and t.
“Toss,” Maggie said with a shrug.
“I don’t know how many letters she cut out,” Alyssa said. “It takes a while, skimming through the book to make sure I haven’t missed any. After that, I’m assuming we’ll have to reorder the letters to make a word.”
“And I’m sure that word will be in Italian,” Janine said, wrinkling her nose.
“Maybe Eva can help us with that part,” Maggie suggested, dropping into the kitchen chair beside Alyssa and taking a pastry. “Why don’t we trade off on searching for cut-outs? You have a crazy look in your eyes, Alyssa. I think you need a break.”
Throughout the rest of that morning, Janine, Maggie, and Alyssa traded off time slots with the book, scouring the lines for cut-outs and scribing any missing letters. By lunch, they were starving, and they allowed themselves a multi-course meal in the sun before they returned to work diligently in the kitchen of the villa. By nightfall, they’d collected five more letters, and by afternoon of the following day, they’d collected enough to sense they had something of meaning, something they could show to Eva.
But before they could invite Eva over, there was a knock at the front door. It was Francesca, Teresa’s secretary.
“Oh! Wonderful,” Alyssa said, hurrying from the door. “We need your help.”
Francesca followed Alyssa into the kitchen, where she smiled prettily at Maggie and Janine. Janine felt as though they’d gone slightly manic, obsessing over the book and its little cut-outs for more than twenty-four hours at this point.
“We have these fifteen letters,” Alyssa said proudly, showing off the scramble of letters on the notepad. “And we’re pretty sure they form an Italian word or phrase, one that will be useful for us for our next clue.”
“Oh! Which clue number is this?” Francesca asked.
“Technically, it’s our second,” Maggie said.
“So, the mausoleum had answers?” Francesca removed a pair of reading glasses from her purse and slid them up her nose.
“That led us to our long-lost cousin, Eva,” Alyssa explained.
“Oh, wonderful. Teresa always adored Eva,” Francesca said.
