4
My happiest day was the day I came home with you.
Julia felt a warm rush of love for her adoptive mother and realized that moving to Tuscany and starting a family divided her life into Before and After.
Gianluca hadn’t met her adoptive mother, so Julia didn’t share her memories with him very often.
Having a birth mother and an adoptive mother was like having a birth country and an adopted country. Confusing.
Julia had grown up in New Gilbert, a small suburb west of Philadelphia, and she spotted the green sign for its exit ahead.
She hadn’t been home in ages and she didn’t have time to stop now, even if she wanted to, which she didn’t.
The tightness in her chest reminded her that not all of her childhood memories were good.
Adoption didn’t guarantee a happy family, just a family.
She flashed on her father, with whom she had tried so hard to be close, but he wasn’t having any.
It was only after her mother’s death that she learned he hadn’t wanted her at all, a reminder that he wasn’t “man enough” to produce a child, which was how he saw it.
He told her that her adoption had been her mother’s idea, and Julia realized that she’d come into the family to pacify her mother, as if she were a doll, not a baby.
NEW GILBERT STATION read the small sign, and Julia suddenly remembered something that had happened there.
It was this time of year, with the chill of winter still in the air, and even this time of day, with evening coming on.
She’d been playing at a friend’s near the train station and left late.
She was riding past the station on her bicycle, then realized her father’s train would be getting in any minute, so she went to the station to wait for him.
Daddy!
Julia’s thoughts slipped back in time, and she was that nine-year-old all over again, watching the silvery train as it rumbled to a stop with a harshly hydraulic screech.
She waited on her bicycle at the exit as the men with their briefcases and the women with their purses piled out of the train, crossed to their cars with jingling keys, and left the parking lot.
But her father wasn’t among them, even after the train lurched from the station.
His black Lincoln was still in a parking spot, its front facing her.
Suddenly, a white Mercedes pulled into the lot, drove around her father’s car, and parked beside it, facing front. In the next moment, her father got out of the Mercedes on its passenger side. He was in his suit with his tie loosened, the way he always looked at the end of the day.
Daddy! Julia called, then her father looked over, his blue eyes narrowing with anger behind his horn-rimmed glasses.
Julia, get home!
Julia’s mouth went dry. She didn’t understand why he got mad at her, then everything happened at once.
Suddenly the Mercedes sped toward the exit, veering so close that Julia lost her balance and fell over. She landed hard on the asphalt with a leg stuck under the bike. She caught a terrified glimpse of the Mercedes driver as the car raced from the parking lot. It was a pretty blonde woman.
Her father stormed over, frowning. Julia, what the hell are you doing?
Julia scrambled to disentangle herself from the bike. The grease from the chain blackened her leg. Blood oozed from a gritty scrape on her knee. Daddy, that lady—
What lady? Her father’s face was red with anger. Get home.
She almost hit me—
Don’t lie. You fell, I saw it. Pick up your bike.
Julia didn’t understand. He’d seen what just happened, so she didn’t know why he’d be mad at her. It wasn’t like him. He mostly ignored her. But Daddy—
Get up. Her father grabbed her bike, righted it, and set it down so hard it bounced. Get on this bike and get home. Tell your mother how you fell. You weren’t looking where you were going.
My knee hurts. Julia took the bike.
You scraped it. Don’t be such a baby.
Julia got on the bike, wincing. Blood ran down her calf and soaked her anklet with the pink pompom.
And if you lie about this to Mom, I’ll punish you. You understand? You fell! Don’t blame others for your mistakes.
Okay, Daddy.
Julia accelerated, shaking her head in wonder that her father’s scheme had worked.
Of course she knew now that her father was cheating with the blonde in the Mercedes.
But Julia never told her mother what she’d seen in the parking lot that day, only that she’d fallen off her bike.
She and her father never spoke about it again, which wasn’t hard, given that they barely spoke anyway.
She realized now that he’d gaslighted her, but she hadn’t had the term to understand it back then.
She knew only that her father told her that she hadn’t really seen something that she saw.
She believed his version instead of her own eyes because she loved him and trusted him, though he deserved neither.
Julia tried to shake off the memory, which she hadn’t thought about in ages, if ever.
She’d suppressed it, maybe even erased it, forcing it from her mind.
The realization just destabilized her, and she needed a lot more therapy to figure out how it had affected her today, but she didn’t have time for that now.
And she never, ever blamed others for her mistakes.
Julia put the thought away, trying to focus as the exit came up.
She steered off the highway and drove onto a two-lane road winding through woods and countryside, with almost no houses.
Most were well-kept with front yards that sported lawn furniture, aboveground pools, and American flags.
She passed bony cows on grass yet to turn green.
More than one yard had firewood for sale and rusty old cars propped on cinderblocks.
GREENTREE COUNTY read a sign with an antiquated picture of a man in a mining cap.
She drove up and down hills and passed through small towns that became more rundown.
Attached three-story rowhomes with vinyl clapboard siding lined the street, many only one room wide.
Satellite dishes and telephone wires sagged overhead like an electrical canopy.
She spotted closed Dollar Stores, thrift shops, and check-cashing agencies, and there were fewer grocery stores but more motorcycle repair shops and smoke shops.
Julia found herself driving behind a truck carrying live chickens in flat cages, their white feathers blowing into the street, as the sun dipped below the treeline.
The sky clouded over, casting a premature gloom.
The terrain thickened to woods, and Julia put on her highbeams. The wind picked up, and the trees moved stiffly, their brittle limbs devoid of leaves.
She felt herself getting drowsy and reached for her coffee, but the cup was empty.
She fumbled in the passenger seat for the bag of glazed doughnuts, but she’d eaten the last of three.
The sugar crash wasn’t helping her jet lag, and she fought a wave of exhaustion.
She tried the radio, but it was set on a sports station.
She pressed the buttons to change it, but the presets were all sports, so she turned it off.
She caught herself dozing for a microsecond, which scared her. She clenched the wheel, did some neck rolls, and willed herself to stay awake. She’d be at Courtney’s grandmother’s soon, and Courtney was waiting for her. Julia kept going rather than pull over.
Boom! Suddenly an orangey red fireball exploded in front of the car. A massive fire erupted with an ungodly roar. Flames blasted her windshield.
“Nooo!” Julia’s hands flew up reflexively. Her heart jumped out of her chest.
The blaze raged everywhere, igniting the branches. The car careened off the road, heading for the trees.
Julia grabbed the wheel and slammed the brakes. The car didn’t stop. Frantic, she pressed the brake again and again. Flames licked at her windows.
The burning car kept going, sliding into a muddy skid. The interior superheated. Grayish smoke filtered into the car. The trees zoomed closer. Six feet, five feet, then four. She’d crash head-on.
Screaming, Julia wrenched the wheel. The car whipped wildly around, then lurched to a stop. Fire engulfed the car and trees in a terrifying conflagration.
She gasped for breath. She fought terror to think. She’d burn to death if she got out of the car. She’d burn to death if she stayed in. She had to drive through the fire. It was her only hope.
Julia reversed to get back on the road. The steering wheel seared her palms. Smoke filled her nostrils.
She threw the car into drive. She couldn’t see ahead. The windshield wipers were smoldering, their rubber burning.
She floored the gas and aimed for the conflagration, not knowing if it would save her or kill her.
Suddenly Julia was speeding down a country road lined with thick woods. There was no fire. No flames, no smoke. She could see out her windshield and her windows. The interior of the car was fine.
She looked at her rearview mirror, stunned. There was no fire behind her, either.
There was no fire anywhere. The conflagration had vanished as if it had never been there at all. She hadn’t driven through anything but air.
She looked at her palms but didn’t see any burns. She squeezed her hands. They felt normal. She didn’t know what was going on. She didn’t understand what had just happened. It hadn’t been real, there was no fire. It had been in her mind.
She didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep at the wheel and dreamed the whole thing. She was jet-lagged, sugar-crashed, exhausted. She hadn’t slept on the plane. She’d lost track of how many hours she’d been awake.
Her gut twisted at her next thought—it could have been a vision, like the ones she had before. This was how it had started last time, and visions followed the premonition. She felt shocked, frightened, disoriented.
But she couldn’t believe this was a vision because it didn’t mean anything.
It didn’t tell her anything. And last time, there had been an eerie blue light before she got a vision, like the aura warning of a migraine.
She’d come to believe that the blue light was the spirit of Duchess Caterina Sforza herself, but no blue light appeared to Julia here.
Plus she was in central Pennsylvania, not Tuscany.
She must have fallen asleep at the wheel, for just a moment.
She accelerated, barreling into the darkness.