Playing With Fire by Tess Gerritsen

downstairs with my aunt Val, and I hear her call out: “Mommy? Mommy, come play with us!” My darling daughter. I shudder at the sound of her voice.
    Rob lets out a troubled sigh. “I’m going to make an appointment for you, Julia. This doctor comes highly recommended. I think she can help you.”
    “I don’t want to see a psychiatrist.”
    “You need to see
someone.
”
    “Our daughter is trying to
kill
me. I’m not the one who needs therapy.”
    “She’s not trying to kill you. She’s only three years old.”
    “You weren’t here, Rob. You didn’t see her studying that toy car, as if trying to understand why it didn’t work. Why it didn’t kill me.”
    “Can’t you hear her calling for you right now? That’s our baby, and she wants you. She loves you.”
    “There’s something wrong with her. She’s changed. She’s not the same baby anymore.”
    He moves onto the bed and takes my hand. “Julia, remember the day she was born? Remember how you cried because you were so happy? You kept saying how perfect she was, and you wouldn’t let the nurse take her away because you couldn’t stand not being with her.”
    I bow my head to hide the tears sliding down my cheeks. Yes, I remember weeping with joy. I remember thinking that I would willingly throw myself off a cliff to keep my baby safe.
    He strokes my hair. “She’s still our little girl, Julia, and you love her. I know you do.”
    “She’s not the same girl. She’s turned into someone else.
Something
else.”
    “It’s the pain pills talking. Why don’t you go to sleep now? When you wake up, you’ll wonder why you said all these crazy things.”
    “She’s not my baby. She’s been different ever since…” I lift my head as the memory takes shape through my Vicodin haze. A warm and muggy afternoon. Lily sitting on the patio. My bow gliding across the violin strings.
    That’s when everything changed. That’s when the nightmare began, when I first played
Incendio.
    —
    My friend Gerda lives at the end of a quiet lane in the suburb of Milton, just outside Boston. As I pull into her driveway, I spot her straw hat bobbing among the flowery jungle of delphiniums and when she sees me, she rises easily to her feet. At sixty-five, silver-haired Gerda’s still as nimble as a teenager.
Maybe I should take up yoga, too,
I think as I watch her stride toward me, peeling off her garden gloves. I’m half her age, but my stiff back makes me feel like an old woman today.
    “Sorry I’m late,” I say. “I had to stop at the post office, and the line went out the door.”
    “Well, you’re here now, and that’s what matters. Come in, I’ve made fresh lemonade.”
    We step into her cluttered kitchen, where bundles of fragrant herbs hang from the ceiling beam. Perched on her refrigerator is an old bird’s nest she found abandoned somewhere, and on the windowsill is her dusty collection of seashells and river stones. Rob would call this place a housekeeping emergency, but I find all these messy, eccentric touches strangely comforting.
    Gerda takes the pitcher of lemonade out of the refrigerator. “Did you bring that letter from the shopkeeper?”
    I reach into my shoulder bag and pull out the envelope. “It was mailed ten days ago, from Rome. His granddaughter wrote it.”
    As I sip lemonade, Gerda slips on her eyeglasses and reads the letter aloud.
Dear Mrs. Ansdell,
    I am writing on behalf of my grandfather Stefano Padrone, who cannot speak English. I showed him the photocopies you sent, and he remembers selling you the music. He says he acquired the book of Gypsy tunes quite a few years ago, along with other items, from the estate of a man named Giovanni Capobianco, who lived in the town of Casperia. He does not have any information about “Incendio” but he will ask the Capobianco family if they know the composer or where it came from.
    Sincerely, Anna Maria Padrone
    “I haven’t heard anything new since I received that letter,” I tell