Page 16 of The Unraveling of Julia

Julia braced herself.

It was the only time she didn’t want to go Inside.

11

Julia followed Anna Mattia into the entrance hall, which was as disappointing as she’d expected. Its walls were a grimy white plaster in need of repainting, and cracks ran up and down its length. Its paint peeled in shreds, and patches revealed the gritty plaster underneath. The floor was of large red tiles, but many were broken and more than one was missing. An old brass umbrella stand stood in one corner, empty.

Julia despaired until she looked up. Remarkably, the domed ceiling in the entrance hall was frescoed with the classical astrological map of the Zodiac, a full-circle divided into twelve thirty-degree sections, each with its own sign based on a constellation and a glyph, rimming the outermost ring. Gold stars spangled a lapis lazuli heaven, and a gilded sun emanated rays opposite an alabaster moon.

Julia couldn’t believe what she was seeing, given her astrology obsession. “Anna Mattia, this fresco is beautiful. Is it original?”

“Don’ know.”

“How old is the villa?”

“’Undreds years?”

“And Rossi lived here for fifty-one?”

“Yes.”

Julia guessed that Rossi commissioned the fresco. It didn’t look older than fifty years, and frescoes were painted into wet plaster rather than onto its dry surface, so they were embedded in the wall. “Do you know who owned the villa before her? Did she ever say?”

“No.”

Julia made a mental note. She could get a title search done, which might tell her more about Rossi. “Did she like astrology?”

Anna Mattia shrugged.

“When was her birthday?” Julia was already playing guess-the-sign.

“Sorry, don’ know.”

Julia didn’t understand. “You don’t know her birthday?”

“No, she don’ like. She never say. She don’ like people know her.”

“Even you?”

Anna Mattia shook her neat head, her lips pursed. “She tell nobody not’ing.”

“How about her friends?”

“She ’ave no.”

What?“No friends? How about people who visited her?”

“No.”

“Did she go out to visit people?”

“No, she live alone, like…,” Anna Mattia paused, cocking her head as she searched for the word. “Don’ know in English, ’ow you say, she is… eremita.”

“A hermit?”

Anna Mattia nodded.

Julia swallowed hard, a hermit herself. She had more questions, but Anna Mattia was already motioning her into a large rectangular living room, also in disrepair. Jagged cracks ran down the walls here, too, andthey bowed out in places. More grayish-white paint was peeled in patches, showing plaster. The floor was also red tile, cracked. The only saving grace was another ceiling fresco, of a whimsical Tuscan landscape. Horses and sheep danced across a bucolic pasture with oversize sunflowers, and peasants in straw hats peeked from vineyards dripping with dark grapes.

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