I jolt straight up in my bed. I’m drenched in sweat. Only dreaming. It takes me several minutes to catch my breath. I get out of bed and discard my sweat-soaked T-shirt. I douse my face with water, and with shaking hands, I riffle through my large cosmetic bag for the pills. A careless doctor had at first prescribed me Ambien, which put me into a flat, dreamless sleep that left me unrefreshed. Worse yet, I would occasionally do strange and humiliating things, like sleepwalk into the kitchen and plow through an entire box of granola bars. One evening, I even called Luke in the middle of the night and left him a long, unintelligible message. A different, better doctor—one Gena sent me to—told me to stop taking the Ambien. I didn’t have a sleep disorder. She gave me Klonopin instead to help with the anxiety but told me to use it sparingly, as it could be addictive. I found myself turning to it more than I would have liked. I know I’m not supposed to take it when I’ve had this much to drink, but what is my body for anymore anyway?

Two days later, I decamp to San Telmo, as planned. I’m not sorry to leave my Palermo building, and even the swimming pool doesn’t feel like enough reason to stay; I haven’t used it once. I’ve also had the dream again. The little girl in the kitchen, the blood, and while I know that the ghosts are products of my overwrought mind and will go where I go, I can’t pretend these visions don’t make me want to leave.

I move in on a Saturday afternoon and hang my things in the closet. That evening, as the sun is starting to go down, I venture into the beautiful little secret garden of the courtyard. I feel hidden away. Entombed.

I’m intrigued by my dark-eyed, elegantly graying landlady, though beyond our first encounter, we only exchange a passing hello. She lives in the building in a unit just off the small lobby. I frequently see her in the courtyard with a woman who looks so much like her, I decide they must be sisters. I feel envious and heartbroken watching them drinking and laughing in the courtyard. Penny and I will never be old ladies together. I can’t think of my childhood without heartache now, and so much of what had once felt promised in my future has now disintegrated too. I’d always thought my sister would be there when I got married, there when I had children, there when I won a gold medal. Her absence reverberates now in both directions—my memories of her suddenly untrustworthy, my future with her obliterated. My children, if I have them, won’t grow up with cousins or an auntie. I will eventually face the death of my parents alone.