Chapter 7 - The Last House on the Cliff
The sun had dipped below the Mediterranean, leaving a smear of bruised purple and gold across the horizon. The air smelled of salt and cooling stone as I walked down the gravel path toward the gatehouse where Giulia and her daughter lived.
It wasn't a grand building—just a small stone cottage tucked behind the olive grove, with yellow flowers blooming in cracked terracotta pots by the front door.
I knocked once.
Giulia opened it immediately, her face pale, expecting bad news, expecting the guards, expecting the end of everything she knew. When she saw it was just me, standing alone in the twilight without a gun in my hand, her shoulders dropped an inch.
Mr. Moretti.
Is Mia awake?
She’s coloring in the kitchen, sir. Do you want me to—
No, I said, stepping past her into the small, warm room. It smelled of boiled tomatoes and fresh bread—a smell that hadn't existed in the main villa for eight years.
Mia was sitting at a scarred wooden table with a box of broken crayons, furiously coloring a blue horse on the back of a grocery receipt. She looked up as I walked in, her dark eyes wide and unblinking.
You’re the man from the big house, she said.
I am.
Are you still angry?
No, I said, pulling out a wooden chair and sitting down opposite her. The chair was too small for me; my knees bumped against the underside of the table. The paint was peeling off the wood in grey flakes.
Good, she said simply, returning her attention to the blue horse. Angry people are loud. My uncle was loud before he went away. He’s not coming back either, is he?
I looked at the little girl, at the smudge of blue wax on her cheek, at the way her hair fell in tangled dark curls over her forehead—curls that reminded me, with a sudden, sharp twist in my chest, of someone I had tried very hard to turn into a memory.
No, I said. He’s not coming back.
She nodded, satisfied with the answer, and pushed a yellow crayon across the table toward me. You can use this. Horses need yellow stars in the sky.
I took the yellow crayon between my thumb and forefinger. It felt awkward, small, fragile compared to the heavy steel of a pistol or the smooth wood of a ledger. But I pressed it against the paper anyway, drawing a clumsy, wobbling star in the corner of the receipt.
Giulia stood by the stove, watching us with her hands folded in her apron, her eyes shining with something she was trying very hard not to let fall.
Mr. Moretti, she began softly.
Tomorrow, Giulia, I said, not looking up from the paper, pack your things.
The kitchen went dead silent. Even the pencil scratching against the paper stopped.
Pack our things? Giulia whispered, her voice trembling. Did we... did we do something wrong?
You didn't do anything wrong, I said, looking up from the yellow star to meet her frightened eyes. But you’re not living in the gatehouse anymore. The east wing apartments have larger windows. The light is better in the mornings.
She stared at me, her mouth slightly open, processing a sentence that made no sense in the grammar of the Moretti household.
The east wing? Sir, that’s—
Empty, I said, standing up and brushing the yellow wax dust from my trousers. And it’s going to stay empty until someone learns how to open the windows and let the sea air in.
May you like
Mia looked up from her horse. Does the new room have a piano?
No, I said, walking toward the door. No pianos. Just a garden where you can grow yellow stars if you want to.
