SIXTEEN
Chiara
You have a GUT, too.
Jack’s words lingered in the room, taking on a life of their own.
A GUT?!
Me?!
The idea cut through my brain, sparking me to life.
I instantly rejected it. “Not possible, Jack. I don’t have a GUT.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as anyone could be.” I gathered the weight of my hair and pulled it into a loose bun. “I mean, yes, I think I would know. Just . . . the scar opening and now this”—I flicked a hand at him—“it’s a lot to process.”
Part of me was still panicking over how close I had come to losing him to the Chucky-slime. If I had wondered before that moment if I really had feelings for Jack, realizing he had been so close to annihilation had quickly set me straight.
I adored Jack Knight-Snow. I loved his snarky sense of humor. His quick mind and insightful ideas. His lingering Lord Knight mannerisms. His kindness and gentleness. His too-seeing eyes and the way that he accepted me, obnoxious and imperfect as I was. The sense that he would always care for and protect those he considered his.
As for my sleepwalking and everything I had apparently said about lightning? They were clear references to things I never let myself think about. Babbo and my dream from the previous evening floated through my memory.
Were these dreams just dreams? Or were they something more?
Did I have a GUT?
“Chiara, I truly believe you have a GUT, too.” Jack’s earnest eyes met mine.
I sucked in a deep, fortifying breath. I needed to tackle one thing at a time.
“No, I don’t.” I gave him my best duh look. “I would know if I had a GUT.”
“But how can you be so sure that you don’t?”
“Uhmm. Remember the whole family curse thing? Gypsies and the first born son?” I asked him. “It’s absurdly medieval and, quite honestly, sexist but the D’Angelo curse has never been attached to us women.”
“Perhaps—”
“Besides, the curse causes madness and suicide. There have been times when certain situations or people—present company included—have driven me to feel homicidal. But suicidal? Nope. Nada.”
Jack wasn’t giving up, his brow drawing down over his pale eyes. “But the events with Branwell last year call that into question. We’ve discussed this. Your family’s curse may just be a genetic legacy that has played out in different ways over the millenia.”
“Your point?”
“If your family’s abilities of Second Sight are genetic, then it stands to reason that they would show up in more than just the first born son. Or sons, in the case of your brothers.”
I scrunched up my mouth, pondering.
No. Not buying. No matter how hard Jack tried to sell.
“Jack, my brothers’ GUTs are super clear and obvious. I assume that, were I to have one too, it would be the same.”
“Have you ever tested to see if you have a GUT?”
Well . . . “No.”
Jack spread his arms wide. As if that made his point for him.
Stupid man.
As if I was too unobservant to know that I had a gift of Second Sight. Sheesh.
“Fine,” I huffed. “Let’s test it. I would hate for you to get your proper English nobleman knickers in a knot.”
I glanced about the room, trying to find something.
“Hah! This will do.” I plucked an obviously well-loved plush Pooh bear from a basket. “Using something that has emotion attached to it should help.”
I had watched my brothers read things many times over the years.
Dante would stare an object down, brows drawn in concentration. Sometimes he would lift his head and track things I couldn’t see.
When Branwell touched something, he would close his eyes and tilt his head, listening to sounds I couldn’t hear.
Tennyson’s visions took many forms. Sometimes he merely rubbed his chest, as if trying to wipe away the feelings of others. Other times he tracked unseen scenes with his eyes or stared sightlessly ahead, murmuring.
I pressed the bear between my bare hands and concentrated on Pooh Bear’s manically smiling face. I got . . . nothing.
For the record, I felt like an idiot.
I puckered my brow. I closed my eyes and tilted my head. Nothing. I opened my eyes and stared unblinking until Pooh divided into a kaleidoscope of bears.
Not an iota of anything.
Not a stray thought, not an odd vision, not a fluttering emotion.
Nothing.
Just the sound of ocean waves lapping and gulls calling. The hum of people walking along the lane outside.
And a growing sense of my own ridiculousness.
I threw the Winnie-the-Pooh plush across the room.
“I got nothing. I’m telling you, Jack. I don’t have a GUT.”
Jack frowned. “Perhaps your GUT just works differently.”
“Or, more likely, I don’t have any sort of Second Sight abilities, and you’re grasping at straws here.”
“Something is going on.”
“I don’t disagree, but me having a GUT isn’t it.”
“I will allow that to pass for now, but I’m still not convinced.” Jack’s look said he wouldn’t be letting this go. “So assuming the scars are not actually tied to your family’s abilities, then there is another force at work here. Perhaps I am a factor, though again, without me present to see the scars, it’s impossible to test. I may not cause the scars, but they have to be connected to me somehow.”
“Because of the weird finger-flickering?”
“Yes, and the fact that I alone can see them. But the cause itself could be something entirely outside and merely stretching to interact with us.”
“But . . . like what? What kind of cause?”
“Let’s take your sleepwalking, for example.”
“Me sleepwalking is the cause?”
“Inadvertently, of course. To be extremely honest, you appear possessed when you sleepwalk. And you speak of power and lightning.”
I swallowed. Jack had a point. I hated the direction my thoughts drifted. I had some truly frightening suspicions.
“You said a couple days ago that your father committed suicide via lightning.” He paused, blue eyes skewering me with their intensity.
I knew what he was going to say. Mentally, I willed him silent.
But though his gaze was filled with compassion and his voice hung with concern, Jack said it anyway:
“I think it’s time we talked about your father’s death, Chiara.”
Ugh.
I sank back on the couch, biting my lip.
“This is what I’m talking about.” I jabbed a finger at Jack. “This was how I know I don’t have a GUT. If I did, I could stop people from putting me on the spot like this.”
A sympathetic smile tugged at his lips. “I know you don’t like talking about it, Chiara, but we both think it might be related. Talking about it could help us in many ways.”
My dream the night before of Babbo and me in Amalfi had been potent, bringing back so many memories. Happy memories. Why was it that one horrific memory made you bury all the good ones right along with it?
As if he read my mind, Jack said, “Tell me a memory of your father. A positive one.”
I picked up a throw pillow—Cinderella twirling under the words Dreams do come true—
Ironic.
“Please, Chiara?” Jack’s voice took on a pleading edge. I refused to look up at him, knowing one glimpse of his concerned, caring eyes and oh-so-kissable mouth would have me spilling all my secrets.
Part of me hated that I liked him. That he made me feel comfortable with myself, which in turn, made me more vulnerable and emotionally open.
That didn’t make his words any less true, however. Jack was right. I did need to talk about this. Babbo’s death might be related, or at the very least, provide some insight.
I brushed some sand off the pillow. Waves lapped out the open window. The hum of voices. The far off buzz of a motorcycle.
Jack waited me out.
I could do this. I could talk about it.
I sucked in a deep breath. Where to start?
“My mother named the boys.” I stared at the pillow as I spoke, tracing the word dreams with my index finger. “She had this thing for Victorian artists—Tennyson, Dante, Branwell, you’ll have to ask her to explain it. Anyway, after the boys were born, my parents figured the damage was done. The family curse would carry on. So why not have more children?
“When Mom got pregnant with me, my dad insisted on naming me. Mom had gotten the boys. Now it was his turn. He chose Chiara.”
“It’s a venerated name,” Jack inserted, “related to Clara in English. Santa Chiara or St. Clare of Assisi is one example.”
“Yeah. My name means light or clear. Dad always said I was his bolt of light. His chiarezza. His clarity.”
Memories of Dad flooded in.
His features and build so like Tennyson, wiry and supple, only with darker eyes and hair like me. He laughed easily. He would swing me onto his shoulders, whispering that I could climb anything I wished, be anything I wanted.
He would be my foundation.
“I was twelve when he died. He had kept the madness back for so long, a lot longer than any other D’Angelo in recent history. He was older than most when he . . .” My voice drifted off.
Silence hung.
I couldn’t force more words past the tightness in my throat.
Jack intervened, tone gentle. “As I said, my father died when I was twenty-two. It’s never easy to lose a parent.”
“No, it’s not. You took over all your father’s duties too, didn’t you?”
Jack nodded. “Yes. I became the next Baron Knight. It’s an old title, which meant I had to take my seat in Parliament, in addition to suddenly having the management of several estates and sprawling financial interests. Even though I had been prepared for the task since birth, it was still overwhelming.”
I could almost see him in my mind’s eye. Reeling from emotional loss and laden with the burden of caring for his family and tenants. Valiantly working himself to the bone to care for them all, heedless of how it hurt him. Pushing until he reached burnout.
That was the Jack I knew.
“But you left it all to come excavate in Tuscany?”
Jack looked away. “I’m not sure if I left it or ran away in avoidance. My reasoning was muddled even then.”
Hmmm. Interesting. Burnout.
“Your father’s death is still raw for you.” Jack said the words softly.
I flinched. “Yes.”
It was so much more than that. Jack didn’t know. No one did. I had never told anyone.
I stared at the floor, unable to move, to even think.
“Ah.” Jack’s voice cut through the room.
It was a deep exhale. As if he suddenly understood. As if all the pieces of a puzzle suddenly slotted into place.
“You witnessed it. You saw your father’s death.”
My panicked inhalation was all the confirmation Jack needed.
No one knew. Not my brothers. Not my mother. It had been my crushing burden to bear. The horrible memory of watching my father die.
Wet drops hit my hand.
Stupid tears.
I scrubbed my face. But it did no good.
More tears followed.
I bit my lip, but a sob still escaped.
I buried my face in the Cinderella pillow, unable to endure the sympathy in Jack’s eyes without cracking into brittle shards. The man practically vibrated with pity and concern.
Ugh.
I hated crying. I hated being the weak one. The pipsqueak that everyone else had to watch out for.
Careful of Chiara. She’s so little. She breaks easily.
You’re too small, Chiara. How can you help?
Turns out they were right . . . in every way.
I couldn’t save the person who mattered most. My love for Babbo wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.
The quiet tears became a torrent.
A thousand images crowded in. Scenes I had long ago cast out. Or avoided thinking about.
Babbo sneaking away with me to buy pastries, because I was, ‘too sweet not to have some.’
Babbo holding me after stupid Marco Benito broke up with me in second grade. Dad cuddling me close and telling me that I would always be his girl.
It all came out. Messy. Ugly.
Years of mourning and sorrow crashing over the dam.
Like my father would have, Jack let me cry. He didn’t tell me to buck up or feed me dumb platitudes like, ‘It’s going to be alright.’
It wasn’t alright.
It would never be alright.
My dad was gone and the aching hole he left would never be filled. His absence would always hurt.
The memory of his death never left me.
That fateful day, I had spent the afternoon melting in the sweltering summer heat. Storm clouds threatened. Which given the warmth seemed like a good thing. But summers in Tuscany aren’t like summers in Oregon. In Italy, rain is usually as warm as the sun and just makes the humidity that much worse.
Rain doesn’t bring relief.
But this day, a breeze ran before the storm clouds. Cooler air that promised respite from the oppressive heat.
I rode down from Florence with Mom to check on Dad. She worried constantly about him being alone in Villa Maledetti, the place Tennyson now lived. Babbo lived there for the same reasons as my brother—it was a welcome hideaway from the rest of humanity and their vision-inducing emotions.
When we arrived in the late afternoon, there was no food in the house. He was bad by that point, rambling most of the time and constantly tracking things none of us could see. Eating clearly wasn’t a priority.
Mom took off to pick up groceries for Dad, but I begged to stay behind with him. And for once, she let me.
Babbo and I sat together in the large drawing room, me crushed against his side on the couch, melting myself into him. We were a smush of a person, he and I. Beneath my ear on his chest, his heart thumped in time with mine.
He drifted in and out of it, murmuring about finding power and stopping lightning. Odd statements, to be sure, but nothing too extraordinary. He muttered things like that often. At some point, I drifted off to sleep.
I woke to a gloomy room and the sound of thunder. The couch was cold where Babbo had been.
A wind lashed across the wide terrace behind the house and through the open French doors. I quickly shut and latched the doors.
The sky roiled and churned. Lightning flashed.
“Babbo,” I called, walking back into the middle of the drawing room.
No answer.
Rain began to fall. Fat, plump raindrops gorged on the humidity and lush excess of summer.
“Babbo!”
Silence.
Then I noticed the note set on a round table in the large room.
Judith, my love. I can think of no other way at this point. I realize now that lightning is the only answer. I must find the power and end the lightning. Forgive me for leaving you so soon. Never forget, you are my heart. Cesare.
Panic hit me with all the subtlety of a freight train.
“Babbo! No!”
I ran through the house, screaming for my father.
“Daddy, no! Please! Don’t leave me!”
The kitchen. The dining room. Up the wide main stairs. His bedroom. The bathroom. The upper study.
No Babbo.
The clouds closed in, boiling in the sky, plunging the fading evening light into blue-green shadows. The rain picked up the pace. Lightning flashed.
I ran back into the drawing room and, looking through the bank of large windows, finally saw Babbo. He stood atop the medieval tower opposite the terrace.
I threw open the paned French door and tore across the terrace.
“Daddy!”
Lightning lit the scene with strobe accuracy. A disco dance floor gone so horridly wrong.
Crack.
He struggled atop the tower, dragging something with him.
Crack.
His head swung back toward me. Eyes staring. Locking with mine.
“DADDY! STOP!”
Crack.
He regarded me, face dripping with rain. Connection sizzled between us.
Mentally, I pleaded with him to not do this. He would feel my emotions. I knew he would.
His chest rose and fell.
No. Stay. I begged him. I need you. Don’t leave me.
I threw every last ounce of my adoration and love for him into my thoughts. I let it flood me.
I love you, Daddy. Come back inside.
He paused, a breath raising his chest. He nodded, as if acknowledging my message.
Rain pounded between us, drifting sheets of water in the driving wind.
Babbo brushed his soaked hair out of his eyes, still drilling me with his gaze.
And then . . .
. . . he shook his head.
Rejecting me.
“DADDY! NO!”
Another shake of his head.
Crack.
He turned away from me and swung to the side, lifting a tall, metal pole up, reaching skyward. He looked toward the roiling clouds, both hands firmly on the metal pole.
My anguished screams had to have carried to him. The horror of my emotions.
He remained firm, face tilted upward.
CRAAAAACK!
A jagged bolt of lightning fractured the atmosphere, pulsing, flaring.
It connected with the metal rod.
The world exploded.
The concussion from the thunder tossed me to the ground. Windows shattered. Pebbles pelted my skin. My ears throbbed. My chest felt heavy. Gasping for air, I struggled to breathe for several moments.
Finally, I managed to push my wet hair out of my eyes and sat up. I wiped water from my face, struggling to see.
“Babbo!” I called, voice hoarse.
No answer.
Another bolt of lightning lit the scene, illuminating all.
I screamed.
Barren.
Gone.
The tower. The metal pole.
My father.
Only the smoking ruins remained, sizzling in the rain.
I staggered back inside to my bedroom and collapsed into a crumpled ball on my bed, hands to my chest, anything to hold my broken heart inside. That’s where my mom found me a short while later.
I never told anyone I had witnessed my father’s death. Just that I thought Babbo had been in the tower when it was struck by lightning.
My mother never knew I had seen his suicide note. I never told my brothers what it said. Tennyson, who could feel all my emotions, perhaps suspected. But we were all so upset over Babbo’s death, my horror and pain likely simply blended into everyone else’s.
It had been my burden to bear. No one else needed the mental image.
But, obviously, I still had Daddy issues over it. And probably a little PTSD, as evidenced by my dreams and the plethora of lightning related behavior I had been exhibiting lately.
I cried and cried as I recounted to Jack what had happened. Heavy, messy tears . . . sobbed in that apartment overlooking the sea.
Jack bore it all with his characteristic patience. He listened to my story of Babbo’s death with gentle empathy and allowed me to cry out my grief.
A finger touched my cheek. Gasping, I lurched upright.
Jack sat beside me, a single glistening tear balanced on his corporeal fingertip.
His finger faded away, dropping the tear to the couch. We both looked at the small wet spot on the cushion.
“I wish I could absorb them for you.” He managed a weak smile. “Or at least be more effective in wiping them away.”
The ache in my throat tightened into a choking knot.
I looked at this man.
I had lied to myself the night before. He wasn’t psychotic or unbalanced or even a loser choice.
He was one of the good ones.
It figured when I did decide to get serious about a good guy, he would be a ghost.
Go me.
“Tell me more about your father. Please. I want to know.” Jack’s gaze was sincere and open. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
Opening up about Babbo’s death released the dam of my thoughts and feelings. Suddenly, I couldn’t say enough about my daddy. Relaxing back into the couch, I told Jack about my babbo, about the man I had lost.
Hours later, shadows stretched and the sun dipped toward the horizon. My stomach protested its empty state.
And so I carried my story into the kitchen, Jack listening patiently with folded arms.
After a full belly of pesto, I sat on the balcony, watching the last gasp of sun light up the western horizon, twirling my cell phone in my hands. Jack rested behind me, staying in the deep shadows to avoid being seen.
Tourists milled around the lane before the house, holding aloft cell phones to snap photos of the sunset, gathering in tight groups for selfies.
Birds flitted around the colorful buildings. Gulls squawked warnings. Starlings darted down to steal trinkets and spoke of things unseen. A congress of ravens whizzed away in formation, promising sudden death and retribution of the sea.
My eyes glanced back at the tourists on the shore, my superstitions aroused. A middle-aged man in white shorts, Bermuda shirt and floppy white hat motioned toward the boats in the harbor. But then he turned to his wife at his side and gestured with his left hand . . . the hand sinister.
It was all a bad omen. A scene flitted through my mind.
“That man is going to die.” I turned to Jack in the shadows behind me.
“Pardon?”
“That man. See the one right there?” I pointed to him with my cell phone. “He’s going to die today.”
“Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “Superstition, I suppose. The flight of the birds in relation to the man’s position make it seem likely. That’s all.”
Jack’s eyes darted to something beside me.
“What?” I stood up and whirled to face him, stuffing my phone into the pocket of my white pajama bottoms.
“A scar just opened, fluttered a bit and then closed.”
Our eyes met. A thousand thoughts chased through my brain.
“What you said . . . ,” Jack began, “it sounded a lot like prophecy.”
My heart pounded.
I looked back down at the man. In my mind’s eye, I saw it again.
The man lying on the pavement of Riomaggiore, eyes staring sightlessly into the sky. His wife screaming hysterically. A raven hopping near his body, a harbinger of death.
The scene felt impossibly urgent.
That man was going to die today.
And only I knew it.