Summary

In present tense, the narration begins by saying “The adventure of the lost heirs begins when Shay and her friend Giustinia run into Harena at the Fleur des Iles café” (59). Giustinia visits Shay at the Red House four years after the House was first purchased, during a spree of beheadings carried out by a serial killer. Giustinia, an academic like Shay who “writes about the inescapable pull of a place to which you belong entirely” (60), visits in the brief period before Shay and Senna’s family visits in August. Shay is determined to keep her as isolated as possible from the news about the beheadings.

While at lunch, Shay and Giustinia catch a glimpse of Harena, a beautiful young woman with a complicated personal history, including being abandoned by her Italian father. As Shay tells Giustinia what she knows of that history, Giustinia...