Chapter 94

Isabella

I had known when the dream began. I could hardly remember when I fell asleep or what I saw in the dream, the only thing I was sure of was that when I opened my eyes, I was no longer in my bed at the Silvestri mansion.

The sheets beneath me had transformed into something softer, warmer, a look-alike of the faded blue cotton of my childhood bedroom. I was standing in the middle of a warm sunlit street I hadn’t seen in years, the cobblestones smooth beneath my bare feet, worn down by decades of footsteps and memories.

My mother was there. She was exactly as I remembered her before the sickness took hold, maybe even better, or maybe still a bit blurred from years of absence, but it felt good to see her. Her hair thick and dark red, a darker shade of mine, cascading over her shoulders in waves that caught the golden light. She was wearing the yellow sundress with tiny white flowers that she’d loved so much, the one Papa had bought her for their anniversa