It's this house, he thought. The lady of this house, the only lady I've ever loved, is dead, and so is her house. Everywhere I go, in every room, there she is...and yet she's nowhere. I can't fathom her absence; she was mother and mentor and closest friend to me all my life. How can she be gone?

He was shaken by the loss of her. His memories of her were so vivid that he could still hear her strong voice--deep, almost husky, and so compelling that audiences had sat motionless through every play so as not to miss a word--praising him when he was growing up and hungry for encouragement; calling to him to share the beauty of a sunset or a painting or to notice the oddities of someone's speech or gait; challenging him to defend his opinions, making him a better thinker and a far better stage director. Her opinions were more important to him than those of any teacher or basketball coach or friend. Remembering her, he could hear her laughter the last time he had visited her here, he could feel her hand on his arm as they walked through her gardens, and feel her breath on his cheek as she kissed him goodbye and said "I am so very proud of you and I do love you, my dear Luke." That was the last time he had seen her; almost the last time they had talked. She died less than a week later.

He was crying. No one in New York would believe it, he thought, not of Lucas Cameron, whose emotions, they said, were locked away, except in the theater where he truly came to life. Through his tears, the olive and cypress trees that shaded his grandmother's flower gardens wavered as if fading away--the way she did--and he jerked himself upright, willing the tears away. Too much to do, he thought; grief is an indulgence.

He walked back to the main salon, but still the memories came, this time of his grandmother, eight years ago, when the doctors told her her heart was getting weaker and she would die if she continued to act. "Then I'll die on stage," she had declared to Luke. "I'm only seventy-seven; no one leaves the stage that early. I always expected to die on stage; it's where I belong. It's my home. Where else would I want to die? Only a fool would leave home to die in a strange place."

"What about the other actors?" Luke had asked. "If you die in the middle of their big scene, they'll never forgive you."

After a long moment, she laughed, a short, bitter laugh, and a few months later she gave in. But she would not stay in New York. She bought a white marble villa nestled in solitary majesty at the top of a long hill, with the landscape of Umbria spread grandly below, furnished it with an exquisite collection gathered in a lifetime of travel, and re-created herself as if she were creating a character on stage. She held telephone conversations with American friends every afternoon; she allowed visitors only after they made appointments far in advance; only Luke was welcome at any time. She and her housekeeper held elaborate discussions every morning about the food for the day and how best to prepare it. She walked in sunlight or showers through the acres of her gardens, conferring with her gardeners in her barely- adequate Italian, with many gestures and much laughter; she paused frequently for rests on the smooth rims of dozens of fountains she had brought in from all over Italy, each one fashioned with a column in the center of a still pool that reflected the mythological creatures poised in marble and granite above, and once rested, she threaded her way through the maze of tightly-pruned hedges that had been one of the reasons she had bought the villa--to confound her guests, she said.

Unable to sleep more than two or three hours at a time, she read late into every night, devouring the books she had put aside in a lifetime of acting. Often, in the silence of her library, she read aloud the plays that playwrights and directors sent her from all over the world, the next day, or the next week, dictating her critiques for her secretary to type and mail.

And she corresponded with Jessica Fontaine, Luke thought, and never told me about it. I wonder why.

In the large salon, he went back to taking inventory and organizing Constance's possessions. Some he was taking for himself; some would be sent to storage in New York; much would be given away according to Constance's will. My salon furniture to my housekeeper, plus everything in the kitchen, which she has made hers through abundant and excellent use; my dressing table and mirror and all my clothes to my housekeeper's daughter, who has eyed them longingly but never was so rude as to inquire if she might have them; my paintings and sculptures to you, Luke, and all my jewels, in the hope that someday you will find a woman to whom you wish to give them; my collection of plays to Jessica Fontaine--

The plays were on a table near the piano. Luke had watched the collection of rare first editions grow through the years as Constance found them in theater and opera libraries and in bookstores throughout the world. They were worth many thousands of dollars, Luke knew, but they were treasures mainly because most of them had notes in the handwriting of their first directors and of authors--George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Corneille, Racine, Chekhov--who often were the directors themselves. Priceless, Luke thought; Constance must have told Jessica she was leaving them to her. But there was no address in her will. How the devil does she expect me to find Jessica Fontaine?

He packed the plays in a large carton that he set alongside the others he was shipping to his apartment in New York. He layered them with tissue paper, double- and triple-wrapping the most fragile ones, then sealed the box and marked it "JF" on the outside, so that he could ship it to Jessica later, when he had her address.

At noon, he ate a cold fritatta and an arugula salad left by the housekeeper, who insisted on coming once a day to take care of him. He sat on the broad terrace that ran the length of the villa, looking out over hills and vineyards, a sinuous silver river and distant villas barely visible in their groves of trees. His grandmother had sat here for hundreds of hours, reading, writing, contemplating. "Sitting here, my whole being gathers in the wonders of this lush, serene landscape," she had written to Luke in the last week of her life, "and I feel I am its caretaker. But of course we all are, aren't we?--all of us who have been given a world filled with such richness and beauty and abundance. We are its caretakers--and each other's caretakers, too--and there should be nothing but gratitude in our hearts. I'm grateful for you, dear Luke."

He had called to say he would be back in a month, just before he began to cast his new play. But four nights later, in the deep- cushioned chair in her library where she read late into the night, with a book in her hand and the box of Jessica's letters beside her, Constance died.

Luke wandered restlessly through the villa and came again to the library and stood beside the chair where she had died. The sun had moved lower and its long rays picked out a Greek statue of a young boy in the gardens just beyond the terrace. He was lithe and wary, but fierce with determination, and Constance had said he reminded her of Luke at seven years old, when his parents died. "I stood beside you at the funeral," she had told him, "and we barely knew each other but you kept leaning toward me, a degree at a time, until your skinny body was against mine and when I put my arm around your shoulders you were trembling so hard it seemed you would never stop. I saw you look at the casket with terror--your mother, my daughter, gone so soon, so terribly young--and then you looked at me with the most awful desperation, because you thought there was no one to take care of you. And when I saw that desperation and terror--and by then your body was pushing so hard against mine that I thought you'd knock us both over--well, I loved you from that moment. You were child and grandchild to me. I cannot imagine a life without you."

From then on, he was always with her. He grew up in her dressing rooms and backstage in every theater where she appeared, studying with tutors and learning as much or more from the wild variety of actors and crew members who moved in and out of his grandmother's orbit. They treated him like a mascot and taught him everything they knew, about every part of the theater, on stage and backstage. By the time he was in his teens, tall and lanky, his hawklike face and unswerving gaze making him look older than his years, he knew more about the theater than any school could have taught him. Still, when Constance insisted, he went to college, but, like a yo-yo, he sprang back to her at every vacation. But, as Constance pointed out to him, she wasn't the only attraction: he also came back to be in the theater. Because by then it was clear to both of them that he would never be able to stay away from it for long.

Luke sat in Constance's chair and put his head back. I ought to get to work, he thought, but he stayed still, feeling her presence. The box of letters from Jessica Fontaine was within reach; he had replaced it in the exact spot where his grandmother had kept it. He opened it and once again ran his finger along their top edges. I wonder what happened to her. She can't be acting anymore; I haven't heard her name in years. To disappear like that, at the height of the most brilliant career since Constance's...how could she do it? Why would she do it?

A little more than halfway through the box, the stationery changed: it had been pale blue, now it was ivory. Luke took out the first letter on the ivory stationery. It was only a paragraph, and the handwriting was that of someone else.

Dear Constance, I haven't written because I was in a terrible accident. You may have heard about it or read about it, but I know that often you don't bother with the news. Anyway, you remember I wrote you that I was going to take a train trip across Canada and I was so excited because it would give me a chance to unwind and get away from everything. But it was terrible...oh, God, I almost can't say it. The train fell into a canyon. Fraser River Canyon. I have nightmares about it every night, and every day, too. I've been sleeping a lot. In fact, for four weeks I was pretty much out of it. I'm sorry if you were worried when I didn't write, but I was in and out of surgery I don't know how many times and I couldn't do anything until now. I still don't want to talk on the phone, so I'm dictating this letter to a lovely young nurse who's been holding my hand all these weeks, stroking my brow and telling me I'm going to be fine. She spins such a convincing tale I've told her she's as good an actress as Constance Bernhardt ever was, but today I feel a few timid stirrings of life, so perhaps there's some truth in what she's been saying. Oh, that's enough, I'm too tired. I'm sorry Constance, dear Constance, I do miss you so... But that's not a complaint, and it's not a hint; I don't want you to come here, it would be too much for you and you've got to think about your own health. I just want you to know that I'm thinking about you and I'll write again, I promise. All my love, Jessica.

A courageous woman, Luke thought. Thinking of Constance while going through her own hell. A different Jessica from the one he thought he had known.

He replaced the letter and stood up to go back to the salon. But this time he took the box with him. Maybe, when I have time, I'll read a few more, he thought. Slowly, through that long day, as he sorted and packed, the salon emptied. Its white marble floors shone cold and hard in the last light of the lingering June evening; the walls, stripped of their paintings, seemed to recede into space, so that the room seemed no place to live, but only a space to pass through. Done in here, Luke thought, anxious to be finished and gone. His footsteps echoed; his shadow beneath the lighted wall sconces was long and thin, sharply bent where the wall met the floor, as if it were racing ahead of him. Constance's bedroom and her desk in the library, and that will be it. Two days at the most, and I can leave. And never come back.

He had parked his rented car in front of the villa and he drove to the village where he was meeting the realtor. At the trattoria, he sat at a table near the doorway just as the door swung open and the realtor came in to sit opposite him. He waved the waiter away. "We will pour our own wine." He raised his glass. "Signore, you have thought about this? You are certain you truly wish to sell?" The realtor was an unhappy man. It was good to have Americans own property in the area; it drove prices up and gave jobs to housekeepers, caretakers, gardeners... If he had known this was the reason Signore Cameron had invited him to dinner at the best trattoria in the village he would not have come; he would have delayed; he would have begun a campaign against selling. But now here he was and time was short. He spoke slowly, leaving hopeful pauses in which Luke could change his mind. "You have considered keeping it for yourself? For yourself and your family? This is truly a good place to bring children for the vacations."

"I have no children. And yes, I'm sure--"

"But for yourself, Signore! It is truly good for the restoration of the self after hard work. And I must confide in you, Signore: the market is abominably slow right now. Perhaps you would wish to keep the villa furnished and ready for you to use while you are trying to sell it. We cannot know how long it will take to get a truly excellent price--"

"A reasonable price. You'll call me with every offer. I'm not coming back."

The realtor sighed deeply. "As you wish, Signore." It was impossible, he thought: the man had no children and he was a director of stage plays; there was nothing in his life to make him human. He was impressive, of course: tall and broad-shouldered, not truly handsome, his face too sharp, with heavy brows and black eyes that bored into one, and black hair shot with gray, hair so thick it was to be envied by those like the realtor who each morning had to artfully arrange the few strands left on a shiny field. An imposing man, Signore Cameron, but rigid in his ideas.

"Now tell me more about the town," Luke said as platters of osso bucco were set before them. He tore another piece of bread from the loaf in the center of the table and poured more of the Brunello. "Tell me about the people."

Wherever he went, he always asked about the people. Claudia hated it. Once she called him a voyeur; she thought it was his fascination with other people that had led him to find her wanting. But that was not it at all. Luke collected people. At home, he made notes on their quirks and eccentricities, their troubles and longings and passions, their private stories and public conduct, their unique vocabulary and speech patterns, the different ways they laughed, the look in their eyes when something wonderful or fearsome happened. They became a wellspring of knowledge that he used to help his actors and actresses develop their characters. And he used it too in a private world where he tried to write his own plays, struggling in his spare time to learn the craft of writing: how to tell a story, write dialogue, build characters, create tension. He had finished two scripts and they lay in his desk; so far, he had shown them to no one.

When he returned to the villa after dinner, he sat in the library, making notes on the realtor's tales of the village, seeing it as he knew his grandmother had. Then he went to the salon and retrieved the box of letters he had left there. The more powerfully he was able to evoke his grandmother's spirit, the more palpable Jessica Fontaine seemed to him: a real woman whose life was entwined with Constance's, a woman whom he now realized he knew almost nothing about, but whose story was here, left to him, he thought, by Constance. Because of course she had done this on purpose. Instead of destroying the letters, she had left them for him to find, so sure of his curiosity and his hunger for people's stories that she knew he would not be able to resist looking into them and then delving deeper, to learn as much about his grandmother, perhaps, as about Jessica. And as he sat in the empty villa, remembering Constance, it seemed that Jessica was there, too; that he could not separate them, nor would they want him to.

Much too mystical, Luke thought, shaking his head. Jessica was more practical than that. Wasn't she?

Dear Constance,

began the second letter in the inlaid box.

I'm so glad you liked the roses...I wasn't sure you even like roses, but I thought they were beautiful and I couldn't let your birthday go by without sending you something of beauty. But every day is beautiful, isn't it? I wake up and help my mother around the house, and it's very ordinary, but then I think about getting to the theater and being on stage, watching you and learning from you and everything is beautiful again. Oh, I am so happy! Thank you for being you. Happy, happy birthday, with all my love, Jessica.

The next morning, it was that joyous letter and the realtor's tales of the townspeople that Luke thought about, fending off the tomb-like feeling of the villa. He went to his grandmother's bedroom. He had put it off, knowing it would be the hardest part--her bedroom and the library where she had spent most of the last year of her life--and he went through both rooms without stopping to rest or eat. He shut his mind to images of Constance using the delicate blown-glass perfume flasks and the gold hand mirror and comb on her dressing table, or lacing the sleek Italian shoes she had so loved, or reclining each night against the lace- edged pillows on her bed, half-sitting because it helped her to breathe, reading until she felt drowsy, then reaching out to turn off the gilded lamp, and sleep. He got through the day, handling without tears everything his grandmother had handled; methodically labeling and organizing everything so that he could leave a day earlier than he had planned.

On the last morning, he walked through the rooms one last time with the shipping agent, tagging furniture and boxes, going over directions.

"And this, Signore?" the agent asked, picking up the inlaid box.

"I'm taking that with me."

"It is heavy to carry. I can ship it with the paintings and boxes of--"

"No, I'll take it." He knew it was foolish, this reluctance to let the box go, but he would take no chance that it might be lost. That afternoon, he packed the few clothes he had brought in his roll-on luggage and wedged the box among them.

He closed the door and turned to leave Constance's villa for the last time. Briefly, he glanced back at the shuttered windows and the gardens empty of gardeners, empty of Constance, and a wave of melancholy swept over him. But then he thought about Jessica's letters. Hundreds of them: intriguing and already important enough to keep close by, for reasons he could not even analyze. To please Constance. To satisfy my curiosity. To understand a woman who now seems almost a mystery. And for whatever other reasons I may find when I read them: reasons that Constance, even at the end of her life, thought of when she left them for me to find...and read.