She remembered the crackers. That caught me off guard.
“Paula, what are you doing here?”
“Checking on you.” She said it like it was obvious. “You left the house the other day looking like you were carrying something heavy. And nobody else in that family is going to check, so.”
I held the door open. “Come in.”
It was a bit early in the day for wine, but we ended up at the kitchen table with the Malbec and the rosemary crackers, talking about nothing for a few minutes—the drive, the weather, a gallery showing Paula had in Portland. Easy conversation.
But I was watching her. Every laugh, every reach for a cracker—I was sorting, trying to figure out if this was genuine or performance. Claudia had taught me what performance looked like. Paula was harder to read because she’d always been the honest one. Blunt, sometimes brutal, but honest.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t lie. Just that she’d be different about it.
“This place has good energy,” Paula said, turning her wine glass by the stem. She was looking at Aunt Amelia’s herbs, the books on the shelf. “I can tell things like that.”
I set my glass down. “What do you mean?”
Paula picked at the wine label. “After Rosaria died, I started having these—moments. Like déjà vu but sideways. I’d walk into a room and feel something that wasn’t mine. An emotion, a memory. Once I heard whispering in my studio and nobody was there.”
She looked up, and underneath the eyeliner and the tough-girl armor, she looked uncertain.
“It’s not strong. Nothing like full-on visions. Just flickers. Enough to make me drive two hours to ask my ex-sister-in-law if I’m losing it.”
“You’re not losing it,” I said. And meant it. “This town has a thing about it. I’m still figuring it out myself.”
Paula’s shoulders dropped an inch. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I poured her more wine. “Paula, can I ask you something? At the house—you said everyone’s just moving on. Do you really think that’s what’s happening?”
Her expression sharpened. The vulnerability tucked itself away, replaced by that Ferraro alertness.
“Nobody in that family moves on from anything,” she said. “They just redecorate around it.”
Paula was on her second glass when she set her wine down and leaned forward with her elbows on the table.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” she said. “Since the family get-together, actually. Seeing everyone together, seeing Claudia playing lady of the manor—it reminded me.”
I waited, keeping my face neutral. Interested but not too interested.
“Rosaria kept a diary.”
The kitchen went very quiet. Even the radiator seemed to pause.
“A locked one,” Paula continued. “Leather-bound, brass lock, old-fashioned. She’d had it for decades. I saw it once when I was sixteen—snooping in her bedroom, yes, I know. She caught me and nearly disowned me on the spot. Grabbed it and said if I ever touched it again, she’d cut me from the will.” Paula’s mouth twisted. “Which she tried to do anyway, but that’s beside the point.”
“Where did she keep it?”
“Top drawer of her dresser. But here’s the thing—nobody’s found or mentioned it. Not George, not Sal, not Claudia. And I looked all for it. The past few months of picking over that estate, every piece of jewelry and china cataloged and fought over. But the diary? Not a word. Either someone found it and isn’t talking, or someone made it disappear.”
I turned my wine glass. A diary. Decades of entries from a woman who knew everything about everyone.
“Did you ever see what was in it?”
“Not a chance. Locked down like state secrets. Whatever’s in there, it’s everything. Every grudge, every secret, every piece of leverage she held over this family for fifty years. Even that old business with my first art mentor.”
I wanted to tell her. The pressure was physical—to sayRosaria’s here, she was murdered, she’s been talking to me.Paula was being honest and I was holding back.
But the timing nagged at me. Paula showing up unannounced, volunteering information. She’d said at the gathering she was “glad the old witch was dead,” and now here she was being helpful and admitting Rosaria had secrets on her.
