Step inside, and one is transported into a memory unfaded. The air is cool and still with salt, beeswax, and ghostly perfume from the gardens that jasmine drifts in from outside. Dust motes waver and hang in the last afternoon sunshine, slanted through the tall arch windows. Most of the furnishings draped in white sheets along the grand foyer lie silent: shadowy forms that seem like sleeping giants. A house that had been sealed in respect; not abandoned-shrine to a dead woman.
"This wing is exactly as it was when she left it," said Dante, a voice quite softer here, stripped of its usual hard, commanding edge. He took me through the silent halls, his hand like a proprietary weight on the small of my back. With strange, almost boyish reverence, he pointed out small details to me: "That was her music room. She played the piano for hours. Over there, her favorite chair for reading. She always had a book with her."
To Isabella, he was talking while trying to draw me out of such memories. In the role, I touched the aged ivory of the piano keys, ran a hand over the faded velvet of the armchair, and murmured soft and vague acknowledgments. Every step felt like being an actress on an abandoned haunted stage with the life of the real Isabella constantly and oppressively over me. I could feel her joy, her peace, and with most, her fear.
He escorted me into a drawing-room, grand with an immense ceiling and a gargantuan stone fireplace. Above the mantle, I caught my breath. This was yet another portrait of Isabella. It was, however, nothing like the formal defiant portrayal at the penthouse. In this picture, she was painted simply in a white gown, sitting out in the garden, a book laid across her lap. The artist had captured her beauty but captured something else that, armed with the knowledge of her diary, I perhaps was the only other person alive to see. It was a deep sorrow in her eyes, a shadowed, watchful quality inconsistent with the soft smile she wore. It was the gaze of a woman who bore a terrible secret, and I felt pinned in place by it, seen by it.
"That's my favorite," Dante murmured from his place next to me. "She looks serene here."
Ironically, that was the bitter pill lodged in my throat. "Yes," I whispered, "at peace."
Finally, he took me to a suite of rooms at the far end of the house, all of which overlooked the cliffs. "These are her rooms. Now they are yours." Rest, he told me. He had calls to make, and Mrs. Castillo, the housekeeper, would bring anything I needed. He left, and the silence that fell was a source of both relief and terror. Let the search now begin.
I gazed around. My heart pounded against my ribs. Where would she hide them? The diary spoke of her love for her writing desk. I found it in a small adjoining study. A lovely mahogany piece with drawers busting with old yellowed stationery and dried-up inkwells. I ran my hands over every inch, searching for a false bottom, a hidden spring. I found a small, locked drawer, but I had no key. It was building up inside me; rage was slipping away.
Soft knock on the door made me jump, the blood running cold in my veins. I spun around from the desk as the aged housekeeper, Mrs. Castillo, came into the room with a silver tray carrying an empty teapot and one cup.
"I thought you might like some tea, Signora," she said with a trembling voice. She would not meet my eyes, staring at the ground as she placed the tray. The poor woman was terrified of me, of the ghost she thought I was.
Those were a little too public for my taste and my posture. I had to calm her, to seem harmless. "Thank you, Mrs. Castillo," I said softly. "That's very kind."
My voice startled her, it seemed. She looked up then, and her wide, fearful eyes came to rest on mine. She saw her long-dead mistress looking at her with kindness. There was a rupture in the old woman's already delicate composure. Her face crumpled, and a tear rolled down her wrinkled cheek.
"Signora Isabella," she whispered, a choked, desperate rasp as she took half a step in my direction. "I'm so sorry. I never told a soul. I kept your secret, just as you made me promise."
I froze, mind racing. Secret?
The old housekeeper's gaze turned wild with ancient grief and fear. she wrung her hands, the words tumbling forth in a flood of confession meant for a dead woman.
"The letters... they're safe, Signora. Just how you placed them. No one ever found them. I swear it."
At that point, she had realized what she had just said and who she had said it to. Raw terror washed over her face. She clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with horrified clarity. Without another word, she turned and practically fled from the room, leaving me all alone in the deafening silence that was my world tilting off its axis.
I was not alone in this anymore. Someone else knew. And she had just told me the letters were here.