despairing, a wounded son and murderer, a thing wanting love but finding only death and despair. In this regard, I should be grateful for my injury. Had it not been for my time in bed, I might never have come to love books as I have, or developed the desire to write about my own tragic life.
A week or so after I began taking antibiotics, Greta removed my bandage to find the swelling had gone down.
“Good,” she said, as she changed the dressing. “Very good.” She brought me a crutch and placed it near my bed. “This is not necessary,” she said, sweeping away the porcelain bedpan. “Now you will walk to the toilet.”
At first, I used the crutch only to get to the green silk screen of my bathroom. Then, I began making small trips around my room, from the bed to the window, from the window to the fireplace, from the fireplace to the toilet, pushing myself a little farther each time. I began to venture out into the hallway, where there hung the portrait of my third great-grandmother—Flora Montebianco, 1819–1858—who was married first to Cosimo Montebianco and then his younger brother, Vittorio, making her my third great-aunt as well. Flora, Basil explained, had died giving birth to Vita’s father, Ambrose, a fate that seemed to mark her with a jealousy of the living. Flora stared out from her portrait with such bold intensity that I felt she was recording all my actions, slyly assessing me from the cage of her gilded frame.
During those painful weeks of convalescence, I longed for Luca to arrive, although in truth, I was beginning to accept that he might not come for me. My husband was not the kind of man to make false promises, but then again, our relationship had been so broken for so long that I couldn’t blame him for backing away. Still, I wanted to see him and to tell him I was sorry for everything. Sorry that my depression and anxiety had separated us. Sorry that I had not understood how much I needed him. But most of all, I longed to tell Luca that his love and acceptance had saved me from more than loneliness, more than being shunned by our community—his love had made me feel alive.
And then, one afternoon, it seemed Luca had finally arrived. I lay in bed when an abrasive whirring came rattling through the windows. I sat up just in time to see the dragonfly body of a Eurocopter descend. I grabbed my crutch and hobbled into the hallway, trying to stay upright. It was a slow and painful trip. I made my way down the corridor and to the central staircase, and was able to hop from step to step, clutching at the balustrade for support, all the while keeping my mind on my goal: the courtyard, the helicopter, my husband, home.
I had just made it to the landing and was about to embark upon my final descent when, from out of nowhere, an animal blasted past me, knocking me down. Fredericka, the Bergamasco shepherd, was loose in the house. I fell, shielding my head with my crutch. Fredericka’s teeth bit into the wood, gouging it. I had pushed her away with the crutch, and was trying to fend her off, when I heard a flurry of footfall on the stairs. There was a click of a leash, and Greta yanked the dog away. She wrestled her down the steps and tied the leash to a wooden finial.
“Jesus Christ!” I said, trying to catch my breath.
Greta shrugged, as if to say that it wasn’t Fredericka’s fault, that it merely was her nature to attack, and that I should know better. But I wasn’t swearing at the dog: through the thick, handblown glass of the bay windows, the helicopter lifted off and flew away.
“The monthly supplies,” Greta said, seeing my disappointment. It hadn’t been Luca after all.
I stood and began dragging myself away, but Greta grabbed Dolores’s wheelchair, stationed nearby, and pushed it to the bottom of the stairs.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing for me to get in. “I want to show you something.”
I had hardly sat down when Greta walked down the hall, pushing me fast, the wheels of the old chair wobbling as if they might fall off. We spun around the edge of the west wing, toward the north side of the castle. There was no electricity in that ruined part of the structure, as I’d learned in my