49
She followed the pickup onto a highway and passed signs for state game lands. The terrain was a patchwork of farms, silos, horses, cows, and woods. They were heading far enough south that she began to wonder if they were going directly to Valley Forge.
Suddenly the pickup took an off-ramp onto a single-lane road and eventually wound its way through thickening woods. The asphalt became rutted with potholes, and the other traffic disappeared.
Julia checked her car’s GPS screen. She was in the middle of the woods, cut through with private roads. She spotted a black mailbox and realized that the roads led to houses that she couldn’t see.
She kept going but there were no other cars, leaving her exposed. It felt too risky to follow any longer. Novak would wonder why he was being tailed. She checked the GPS and spotted an alternate route that came close to wherever Novak was heading, presumably a house or a farm.
She took the left turn on the alternate route as soon as she reached it, breathing easier, then traveled that way.
It took her to two right turns farther north, and she found herself on a dirt road through woods.
She drove the road and realized that she was approaching the same property from behind.
She turned off her headlights to avoid being seen. She kept going on a dirt road that dead-ended as it left the woods. She emerged before a wide swath of overgrown grass and raggedy bushes, situated above a valley.
She cut the ignition and got the lay of the land.
The closest building was an old Pennsylvania bank barn built into the side of the hill, with a crumbling stone foundation and rusted sides of weathered blue corrugated metal.
She was level with its hayloft and assumed she was on an old service road used to deliver hay, in the past.
The barn’s ground floor was in the valley below, across from a dilapidated white farmhouse, a tenant cottage, and storage sheds of rusted corrugated metal.
Bright security lights shone on the corners of the buildings, illuminating the area.
Julia wondered why a property so poorly maintained had such bright lights.
She looked for the black pickup truck and spotted it in front of the farmhouse, along with a few compact cars and a boxy white U-Haul truck. She didn’t know if it was the same truck that had been at the staging area.
Men clustered around the truck, and she assumed one of them had to be Novak. She counted five men and gathered that the fifth man must’ve been at the farm already. They were doing something, but it was too dark to tell what at this distance.
Her chest tightened. She picked up her phone to use the photo function as a telephoto lens. She scrolled to the phone function, but just then the home screen flashed on and her phone started to ring.
Shit! Julia silenced the call. The home screen read Sherry Moretti and showed a photo of her mother-in-law, grinning in a flowy caftan. The phone rang silently in her palm. Julia didn’t know whether to answer it. She realized the call could be about Leni. It was morning in Tuscany.
The phone rang again. Julia decided to take the call and get off quick. She was far enough away that the men wouldn’t hear her. She pressed Answer, put the phone to her ear, and cupped her hand around the screen, just in case.
“Sherry, what is it?” Julia whispered.
“Talk to Leni, you have to!” Sherry shot back, distraught. Leni wailed in the background, screaming at the top of her lungs, a shriek Julia had never heard from her before.
“What’s going on?” Julia asked, horrified. Her heart began to pound.
“She’s screaming for you! She’s been this way all morning! She insists on talking to you, not Gianluca! I’ve never seen her like this!”
“Put her on,” Julia said, panicky.
“Mommy… Mommy!” Leni came on crying, trying to speak between sobs. “I’m afraid… Mommy… I’m afraid… Mommy…”
“Don’t be afraid, honey. There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re fine—”
“No, I’m afraid… about you… Mommy… you—” Leni’s voice cut off. The call ended.
The phone screen went black. The battery was dead.
Julia exhaled, shaking. Leni sounded like she was trying to warn her, and the timing of the call was so coincidental.
It struck her that Leni could have inherited her psychic gift, which was a thought Julia hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge, until now.
She’d been so ambivalent about her psychic ability, not knowing if it was a blessing or a curse, and the last thing she wanted was for her daughter to grow up with the same struggle.
Julia resisted the notion, reflexively. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
She wasn’t completely sure you could inherit a psychic ability and she knew that her birth mother, Fiamma, had none, which was one of the reasons why Julia questioned her own abilities.
Besides, Leni was a kid, and kids had tantrums for their mothers.
The timing of the call could have been coincidence.
Leni had been stressed for days and could have reached her breaking point. It didn’t mean anything.
Julia’s gaze went to the shadowy men clustered around the U-Haul.
She knew that if she got out of the car, she’d be putting herself in mortal danger.
Tears came to her eyes. She didn’t know if she should keep going.
She could just stay here until the men went to bed and drive safely away.
She thought of what Gianluca had said on the phone.
You’re a mother now. You can’t put your life in jeopardy, any more than I can.
Julia knew he was right. She would never do anything to hurt Leni and loved her child with every fiber of her being.
She felt a sudden surge of strength in the bond between mother and daughter, a connection that began deep inside her very body, even soul level, and one that stretched across land and water, across time and space, reaching all the way to her daughter’s soul.
It felt like a moment of truth, and Julia made a decision.
She realized she couldn’t turn away from what she had to do next.
She wasn’t about to quit, even if it put her life in jeopardy.
She hadn’t come this far just to come this far.
She had to go forward. She hoped she could make Leni understand later, or that someone else would.
Julia set the phone on the passenger seat, her thoughts sharpening to a focus that was surprisingly crystal-clear.
She’d spent so much of her life puzzling over the decisions her mother made, both her birth mother and adoptive mother.
She’d never really understood why her birth mother hadn’t kept her, or why her adoptive mother had stayed with her adoptive father.
Sometimes the hardest task of a daughter was to understand her mother’s decisions.
And just then, in this moment, Julia understood both women, and forgave them. Because she herself was about to do what was right for her, and maybe only her. She could only hope that Leni would forgive her, in the end.
Julia opened the door and got out of the car.