Page 183 of Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

But not before another warning: I need to stay in the hotel. No more sightseeing for us. Not until they find Marta. Not until they figure all of this out.

I leave in the room in a daze and walk into Oliver’s arms. He wraps me up tight and tells me it will all be all right, and this also feels like it’s happening in slow motion, like in a montage. Harper is there, too, full of questions, but I can’t answer any of them now. I want to sleep for a week, and maybe, tomorrow, in the cold light of day, there will be answers.

So that’s what I do.

I go to bed and I try to sleep, but it’s fractured. I’m skimming along the surface like sleep is a thin sheet of ice on a lake.

Any minute, I’m going to break through and fall into the cold black water.

And maybe, given everything, I’ll never surface.

I do, though. Life, after a fashion, goes on.

I turn the page on a horrible day. Impossibly, I wake up and realize that it’s only the seventh of July. I check the tour schedule for some grasp at normality, even though we’re not going anywhere. We have a free day in Sorrento.

Is the tour schedule laughing at us?

Maybe.

My phone is a nightmare of notifications and missed calls from “Maybe: New York Times” and “Maybe: CBS News.” I have thirty-eight voicemails and hundreds of emails, including panicked ones from my editor and agent. I text them both to let them know I’m okay, that I’ll call them when I can, then shut off my phone.

I don’t want to talk to anyone about any of this, but I know my immediate punishment is going to involve a day with what’s left of our group, and maybe, if I’m very lucky, the BookFace Ladies.

I get up and get dressed. I meet Oliver and Harper in the dining room and eat breakfast. Allison joins us, while Guy, Emily, and Connor sit together at another table. Connor looks deflated and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him. Which shouldn’t be a surprise given that he’s been sleeping with someone who wanted to murder him.219

It’s another hot day, the heat shimmering through the windows like a mirage on a hot highway, and I’m glad to be inside.

Under the circumstances.

“El?” Oliver squeezes my hand under the table like we’re kids in school with an illicit romance.

“Yeah?”

“You okay?”

“I’m getting there.”

Harper shakes out her napkin over a huge plate of food. “I’m strangely starving.”

“Death will do that to you.”

She gives me a look.

“Think of Irish wakes.”

“That’s the alcohol.”

“Oh, right.” I look down at my plate of eggs and bacon and a flaky croissant. I need to eat, but it all tastes like sawdust in my mouth. I try anyway, and we take our time over it because we have nowhere to go.

And we can’t help but talk about what happened, some clues popping into our memories like popcorn.

—How I thought that whoever thought it was a good idea to book a tour in Italy in July was a lunatic.

—How Connor said he thought the person who mugged him was Italian.

—How Connor had Davide the pedestrian’s number, which meant that Isabella then had it, too, so was able to find him.

—How Marta must’ve planned for Harper to have the master key.