Page 27

Helen

Now

During the boat ride back from Tiberio, I think I see her twice: first, on the bow of a tender that passes us when we reach the teeth of the Faraglioni, the wind tugging at her loose hair. And again, when I disembark at the Marina Piccola and see her in the window of an apartment building, stringing kitchen towels in the midafternoon sun. And I might believe it really was her if it weren’t for the fact that the outline of her lifeless body clicks into stereoscopic focus every time my eyes close.

Click. Death.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me back to the yacht?” Stan says.

I could, I know. But I want to be with them when the police arrive. Because surely they will arrive. I want to see their faces. To see how they decide to spin Lorna’s death. I think I’ll be able to tell, in that moment, if they’re surprised. Or if they knew.

“I’ll be fine,” I say to Stan.

“You don’t have to be with them,” Stan says.

Still, he doesn’t understand.

“They’re my family,” I say.

And then there’s the thing I don’t say: I have to. It’s my fault. Only I can fix it.

I try to isolate the moment that led to Lorna’s death. Did it begin with me wanting more? More autonomy, more space? Or did it begin when Lorna and I became friends? Did it start with Stan blackmailing her or when the necklace arrived? Or was it earlier? Was my mother’s death the thing that led us here? Wasn’t that when the balance shifted? When everything got tighter, smaller? Wasn’t that why Lorna was out, two nights ago, on the island of Capri with a bag of money—to keep my mother’s death out of the public discourse again ?

“If you need anything—” Stan says.

It feels like the thing he has to say.

Some part of me can still see him intercepting Lorna two nights ago. Asking her why she’d been avoiding him. Growing angry. Making a terrible mistake. A push, a strike, a drowning. I look around the surfaces of his boat one last time, but any evidence of her has long since been scrubbed clean.

I leave Stan in the marina. And when I reach the entrance to the villa, I stand in the street. I hesitate. I could never open this gate again. I could leave. Disappear. Take Stan up on his offer to help. But I owe Lorna more than that.

When I open the door, nothing has changed: the columns and the lawn and the sea at the cliff’s edge are the same. The miniature paradise the same despite Lorna’s death, despite my mother’s. Every time I blink, I see Lorna’s body. I don’t know how I’ve avoided seeing my mother’s body all these years, too.

The fact they can still come here and enjoy this—the villa, the pool, the view—after her body was found mangled at the bottom of that cliff, the one right at the end of the garden, causes my skin to bump despite the heat. Every year they come here to show me what they’re capable of. They’ve never had to say it out loud.

They’re capable, I know, of leaving Lorna’s body in the water. I’ve tried to tell myself, on the boat ride, on the walk back here, that it could have been a stranger who killed her, someone who followed her. Someone who wanted the money. There’s Ciro’s hand—the cut so deep, so fresh, it’s barely healed. There’s Stan’s anger. But the truth has always been in the contours of my face, the sound of my last name. They’ve relied on that: that I’m one of them. It’s why, coming back to this villa, I don’t think they’ll hurt me. It’s perverse to know that it’s all in the service of protecting us. Even me.

I walk into a silent foyer. The kitchen is empty. In the living room, I see the faint outline of a body pressed into one of the couches.

Click. I see Lorna.

But it’s Naomi. I can tell from the size and hair.

“Naomi,” I whisper.

There’s a version of this week, I know, where I might have confided in Naomi, not Stan. She’s the only one who ever tried to show me a world outside of the family. It was Naomi who advocated for me when I wanted to go to Rome. Naomi who said the driver was unnecessary. Naomi who encouraged my father to give me more freedom with Freddy. Naomi who always suggests we go instead to Sicily, Minorca, Cap Ferrat.

They always say no.

There’s an empty wineglass next to her and a handful of loose pills scattered in the direction of the lamp on the marble surface of the side table. I scoop them up—half are small and oblong, the others round like aspirin—and slip them into a glass that I set on the bar cart, tucked behind the rarely used bitters and mixers. If I leave them in the trash, she’ll find them, and if I flush them and she genuinely needs them, it will be impossible to explain myself. Best, I think, to set them aside for now. Best, I think, to talk about her growing dependence on them at home. Where it’s safe.

She’s breathing steadily, like she has slipped into the kind of sleep that will allow her to stay awake all night. The kind of sleep everyone on this island needs.

On a sailing trip in Greece two years ago, I tried to ask Naomi about the week my mother died. She was more lucid that day; there were no pills, just glasses of wine. But when she started to talk to me about it, her eyes welled up so quickly that I changed the subject. I patted her hand. I didn’t want to cause her distress. I had been trained not to cause any of them distress.

“Your uncle isn’t always an easy man to live with,” she said. “Your father knows that, too. But that was the hardest week of my life. Of our lives.” And then she laughed, wiping her fingers under her eyes. “But we’re stronger now. All of us. It’s strange, but we’re closer.”

They’d been together so long; she’d been a part of our family for so long. We left it at that. Capri is always hard on Naomi. Life, sometimes, seems hard on Naomi. I don’t begrudge her the pills.

I check the rest of the house for my family but can’t find my father or uncle. I slip into the garden and see Freddy and Ciro seated around a table by the pool, Freddy’s swim trunks slicked to his legs like he just hoisted himself out of the water. Ciro, finishing a small white cup of espresso. The unwelcome sight of the two of them together temporarily replaces Lorna’s body in my mind. But it comes back, uninvited. Click. I hear the sound of her body slapping against the hull.

The housekeeper adjusts the tilt of the umbrella above them to make the shade deeper. She squeezes Ciro’s arm before she leaves, and I follow the gesture to his hand. I want to grab it and see how ragged the edges of the cut are. But I can’t. Not with Freddy here.

I join them and ask: “Have you seen my father?”

There’s a moment in which Freddy is swallowing his champagne and it seems to catch in his throat, like he doesn’t want to tell me something, but the moment passes.

“They went out,” Freddy says. “Apparently Bud Smidge is on the island.”

Bud, the family lawyer. It must have been Bud who supplied the cash two nights ago. Bud who they called when the necklace arrived. Bud who is now on hand for the cleanup.

I sit down in a chair across from the two of them, and the housekeeper offers me a glass for champagne but I wave her off.

“Have you seen the paper yet?” Freddy asks, sipping.

“No,” I say.

He nods.

Ciro looks at me, and I feel like he’s trying to tell me something, only I’m not sure I want to know what it is. Both of them are vibrating with some news I don’t know. And I can’t help it, my first thought is that they’ve been talking about me. That in so doing they might have learned they have me in common. Maybe it would be easier if they had. It’s difficult, after all, to constantly skirt disaster. It makes you long for the moment when it finally happens. And right now seems like the moment for awful things.

Ciro stands and walks to a sideboard that sits in the shade under an awning. He picks up the paper and brings it back to me.

“Fourth page,” he says.

When I don’t open it, Freddy says:

“I think you should.”

But I don’t want to look. I imagine the news of Lorna’s death splashed across the insides of the paper. The thought of it in print reminds me of my mother. All the articles, the never-ending beat of set type, speculation, death. My fingers play at the edges, and Freddy takes the paper from me, opens it, folds it, and sets it back down in front of me. I scan the headlines for Lorna’s name but see nothing. It’s too soon.

Finally, Ciro points at a small block of copy in the corner. And I can see it on his palm, the place where the cut has scabbed over.

I can’t even finish the headline— Investigation into Sarah Lingate’s Death Reopened —before I realize they must have pushed for this placement, my father and uncle. Because otherwise it would have been on the front page, above the fold. They knew. They knew it was coming. They still have chits left to call in. I push the paper away, but I can’t hear the way it slides across the glass table, or the birds, or even the music from the marina, I can’t hear it because I feel as if I am underwater. Everything thick and cottony.

Click. I see Lorna’s body tangled in the net.

Click. My mother’s face in black and white.

Click. Ciro’s hand.

Click. Freddy trying to tell me something in the shallows.

Click. The necklace.

Every blink a new horror, fully dimensional. I want to be able to stop the slideshow, but I can’t.

They’re both trying to talk to me now—Freddy and Ciro. Freddy stands up and comes around the table to me, and even though his voice still sounds far away, I smell something close on him. Something I haven’t smelled since the other night—it’s Lorna’s perfume. I recoil.

Ciro watches the two of us. I know that he doesn’t want to get involved. He wants to be able to wait this out, but he stands when he sees me pull away from Freddy. Before he can reach me, I push back the chair I’m sitting in, let it topple over. I’m surprised to find myself standing. Even more surprised to find myself running up the stairs to our bedroom and reaching for the drawer where the necklace should be, but it’s gone. In Lorna’s room, I search again through her carry-on. Looking for the pregnancy test I had seen earlier, too. But it’s also gone. The play, thank god, is still where I left it, in the armoire, beneath the blankets. At least I have that.

It’s an awful feeling, knowing that they’ve been ahead of me this entire time, closing me in, blocking the exits. A gentle neutralizing of an internal threat. It’s indulgent to consider myself a threat. I know they haven’t. Was there ever any money in the bag? Or was that fake, too?

Did I ever have a chance?

Ciro has followed me up the stairs.

“Freddy is trying to get ahold of your father,” he says.

Then he walks to the window so he can see him and waves down to confirm he’s found me. That it’s okay. He leaves the window and crosses to me. And before he can touch me or kiss me or make this moment any more complicated, I say to him:

“Lorna’s dead.”

But it’s clear, somehow, he already knows.

They all know.