More Twisted

into the driver’s seat, Marissa looked past him to the opposite side of the street. The twins were gone.
    Antonio shoved the shifter into gear and they sped away. Marissa asked him about the old woman. He blinked in surprise. He hesitated then gave a laugh. “Olga . . . she’s crazy. Not right in the head.”
    “Do you know a Lucia?”
    Antonio shook his head. “Did she say I did?”
    “No. But . . . it seemed she was telling me about her because she recognized your car.”
    “Well, as I say, she’s crazy.”
    Antonio fell silent and wound his way out of town, eventually catching the A7. He then turned south onto the SS222, the famous Chiantigiana highway, which winds through the wine region between Florence and Siena.
    As Marissa gripped the handhold above the door in the car, they raced through Strada then past the magnificent Castello di Uzzano, then Greve and into the sparser regionsouth of Panzano. This was beautiful country—but there was an eeriness about it. Not too many kilometers north, the Monster of Florence had butchered more than a dozen people from the late sixties to the mid-eighties and here, south, two other madmen had not long ago tortured and slaughtered several women. These recent killers had been captured and were in prison, but the deaths were particularly gruesome and had occurred not far from where they were at the moment. Now that she’d thought of them Marissa couldn’t put the murders out of her mind.
    She was about to ask that Antonio turn the radio on, when suddenly, about three kilometers from Quercegrossa, he turned sharply onto a one-lane dirt road. They drove for nearly a kilometer before Marissa finally asked, her voice uneasy, “Where are we, Antonio? I wish you’d tell me.”
    He glanced at her troubled face. Then he smiled. “I’m sorry.” He abandoned the mystery and solemnity he’d been displaying. The old Antonio was back. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was just being dramatic. I’m taking you to my family’s country home. It was an old mill. My father and I renovated it ourselves. It’s a special place and I wanted to share it with you.”
    Marissa relaxed and placed her hand on his leg. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t cross-examining you . . . . There’s just been so much pressure at work . . . and trying to persuade my father to let me have a few days off—oh, it was a nightmare.”
    “Well, you can relax now.” His hand closed around hers.
    She lowered her window and breathed in the fragrant air. “It’s lovely out here.”
    “It is, yes. Pure peace and quiet. No neighbors for several kilometers.”
    They drove five more minutes then parked. He retrieved the gray bag he’d collected at that ramshackle place in Florence and then removed the suitcases and a bag of groceries from the trunk. They walked fifty meters along a path through an overgrown, thorny olive grove and then he nodded toward a footbridge over a fast-moving stream. “There it is.”
    In the low light of dusk she could just make out the house on the opposite shore. It was quite an impressive place, though far more gothic than romantic—an ancient, two-story stone mill with small windows barred with metal rods.
    They crossed the bridge and he set the suitcases down at the front door. He fished for the key. Marissa turned and looked down. Black and fast moving, the stream seemed quite deep. Only a low railing separated her from a sheer, twenty-foot drop into the water.
    His voice, close to her ear, made her jump. He’d come up behind her. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    “What?” she asked, her heart beating fast.
    He put his arm around her and said, “You’re thinking about that urge.”
    “Urge?”
    “To throw yourself in. It’s the same thing people feel when standing on observation decks or the edge of a cliff—that strange desire to step off into space. No reason, no logic. But it’s always there. As if—” He released hershoulder. “—I were to let go there’d be nothing to stop you from jumping in. Do you know what I mean?”
    Marissa shivered—largely because she knew exactly what he meant. But she said nothing. To change the course of the conversation she pointed at the far shore, at a small white, wooden cross, surrounded by flowers. “What’s that?”
    He squinted. “Again? Ah, trespassers leave them. It happens often. It’s quite irritating.”
    “Why?”
    After a moment he said, “A boy died here. Before we owned