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.
