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"Romeo," my voice, a plea into the bedding, spent and exhausted but willing to do anything he says.
"One more. And then we go downstairs, and you sit in my lap, and you let them all see what a satisfied Donna looks like."
FIVE
IRIS
In the daylight, blindness is a world of moving fog, gray silhouettes, and shimmering halos of light.
At night, blindness is an execution.
Daylight at least gives me edges, a smear of gold on marble, and the suggestion of a doorway I can count my way toward. Night takes even that and leaves me with sound and smell and the old knowledge that a floor can end without warning. I have spent three years teaching myself not to panic when the lights go out, and still my mind runs to the church, to rope, to glass, to the kind of dark that does not love you back.
There are no shadows to guide me. There are no shifting contrasts of sun across marble to tell my brain where a wall ends and an abyss begins. When the sun dips below the Mediterranean horizon, the universe turns into an infinite sea of black ink.
I wake up around two in the morning, drenched in cold sweat from a nightmare of falling stained glass and Father Donald's gurgling voice. The bed’s empty beside me; Romeo had stepped down to the lower level hours earlier for a midnight transatlantic conference call with our port capos in New York.
Sofia nudges my hand, whimpering softly with her tail thumping, needing to go out onto the courtyard terrace.
I thought I knew the layout. I had counted the steps from our master bedroom down the south gallery thirty times with Romeo's hand on my waist. Ten steps forward. A left turn at the Roman urn. Six steps to the glass double doors that open into the walled inner courtyard.
I push the doors open now from memory, letting the cool mountain breeze wash over my hot skin.
Then everything goes wrong.
A sharp, violent screech echoes from the olive grove near the cliff edge, like a stray feral cat or an owl hunting prey. Sofia stiffens by my side, lets out a thunderous, lung-splitting bark, and bolts into the night.
"Sofia! Stop! Come here, girl!" I shout, lunging forward with my hand outstretched.
My fingers catch the very tip of her nylon lead, but the sheer momentum of a seventy-pound Doberman jerks the handle clean out of my grip. Her racing claws click against the stone pavers, and within three seconds, her barking grows distant, swallowed by the roar of the wind whipping up from the sea.
Panic hit me like a bucket of ice water.
"Sofia!" I cry out desperately, pausing for a beat to see if she’ll appear, but she doesn’t.
I take four hurried steps forward onto the terrace, my bare feet searching for the familiar smoothness of the polished pavers.
Instead, my toes hit cold, uneven gravel.
I spin around to reach for the doorframe, my palms frantically slapping through empty air.
Nothing.
Just empty, whistling wind.
I’ve crossed past into the courtyard threshold. The south terraces of the estate don't have walls; they descend down the mountain in three tiers of ancient stone steps, lemon groves, and rose hedges, ending at the jagged cliff drop where the sea crashes four hundred feet below.
"No, no, no," I whimper, extending both arms in front of me like a child in the dark.
I take another step backward, trying to retrace my path, but my heel catches the edge of a raised stone border. I trip, my legs tangling in the hem of my thin cotton nightgown, and go crashing hard onto the rough gravel.
Sharp stones bit into my bare knees and palms, tearing the skin as tears of fear and frustration trail down my cheeks.
A choked scream gets caught in my throat, trying to think clearly, but panic has overridden everything inside me.
The wind howls louder, rushing up the cliffside with a deafening roar that scrambles my hearing. The acoustic cues I rely on to map out space completely dissolve into chaos. Every rustle of the lemon leaves sounds like footsteps. Every whistle of the breeze sounds like a human breath right beside my ear.
My vision tunnels into terrifying, absolute blackness.
