Page 29

Helen

Now

I don’t know how Ciro already knows about Lorna, but I hate this feeling—that I’m the last to arrive. You can always see it in their faces, the patient indulgence while you catch up. I see it on Ciro’s now, even if he tries to hide it.

“I should go,” he says. “I just came to tell you.”

“You already knew,” I say.

“A friend reported the body early this morning. It’s a small island.”

He starts for the door of the bedroom, but I stop him.

“You’re not surprised that she’s dead?” I say.

“Are you?”

The matter-of-fact way he asks makes me feel like an idiot. It was easier to imagine Lorna with the money, gone. Not nearby, not floating on the far side of the island.

“Did they find the money?” I ask.

“I haven’t heard,” Ciro says. “They’ve already identified her, though. Not formally, of course. One of you will have to go down and give a positive ID. But they know she was here with you.”

“You told them,” I say.

He shrugs. And I can’t help but wonder if he thought it was us as soon as he heard. Perhaps his mother has told him enough over the years. Perhaps he’s always known more than me.

“I mentioned to my friend that she hadn’t been home. That you thought she’d just had a long night out.”

That means the police will be here even sooner than I thought. But then, based on the placement of the article in the paper, my family already knew that.

“The island doesn’t benefit from publicizing these types of events,” Ciro says. “But the police will come today. You should be prepared.”

I suppose I already am. My mother was a dress rehearsal.

“I called earlier and spoke with Freddy, but he said you weren’t home. He said he would text you and tell you to call me.”

I don’t want to explain to Ciro how only hours ago I thought I’d seen Lorna. How I chased her. How I ultimately found her. But I can imagine Freddy, the phone tipped against his cheek, an affable She’s not here, but I can tell her you called being said into the receiver.

“He never texted,” I say, checking my phone to be sure.

Is Ciro lying to me? Did he talk to Freddy? Was it really a friend who tipped him off? All the physical evidence I’ve seen—the pregnancy test, the necklace, the laptop—is missing. The only thing left is Lorna’s body being hauled from the water, the healing cut on Ciro’s hand.

I’ve failed to learn from Lorna the one thing she knew with certainty: you are the only person capable of saving you.

We hear my uncle and father come in. Their voices echo up to us, and my uncle is asking for an afternoon drink. Something sour and tart.

“I need to go,” Ciro says again. “I can’t be here when the police arrive. If my friend knew we were this close…”

He lets it hang there. His friend would stop trusting him. His friend would no longer value his opinion on each member of the family. His friend would turn his attention to Ciro and me. I squeeze his hand and watch him slip down the stairs. I check again for the necklace in the drawer, but it only confirms what I already know: it’s gone. I can almost hear my father say, I asked you not to wear it. The accusation being that I deserved to lose it. That it was dangerous not to listen.

A signal comes from the front gate—a dull, ancient buzz that fills the kitchen and travels up the stairs. I go barefoot to the second-story window in the hallway, where I watch the housekeeper reaching for the heavy wooden door. I don’t need to stay to see who it is, but I do anyway, their blue shirtsleeves an easy giveaway.

The carabinieri are here. They must have passed Ciro in the street. They follow behind her in a clump—three of them.

I trot down the stairs and the housekeeper makes introductions in Italian. I ask how I can help.

“Is the rest of your family at home?”

“Of course,” I say, and gesture that they should follow me.

My heart beats in my throat as we approach the table overlooking the Faraglioni, but neither my father nor uncle looks surprised to see them. In fact, my uncle stands, pulls over three chairs, and offers them graciously. The police decline. They stay standing. I do, too.

“Thank you for your audience,” the oldest and clearly most senior says. It’s an awkward wording, a bad translation.

“What can we help you with?” my father says.

“Do you have another individual traveling with you?” the officer asks.

My uncle nods.

“My assistant,” he says. “Lorna Moreno.”

“And the last time you saw her?”

“Two nights ago,” Freddy volunteers.

Even now, in this environment, everything about Freddy is easy. He’s an invitation back to the normal world. An off-ramp. But the police don’t take it. My palms are sweating; I keep them behind my back, lightly clasped.

“We believe she was found dead this morning,” the officer says. There’s not so much as a flinch. The tone identical to when he asked, moments ago, And the last time you saw her?

“That’s impossible,” Freddy says. And even though he laughs, neither my father nor Marcus says a word. It’s their silence that forces his own, like he’s only just realized this isn’t that kind of conversation. My father and uncle glance at each other, and I try to read their look. It’s quick. My father’s lips thin, but Marcus seems ready to reassure—he blinks, nearly smiles.

“I have something you’ll want to see,” my uncle says. He disappears into the house and returns with the letter, the one that arrived with the necklace. He passes it to the officers. “We were just meeting with a friend to discuss what might have happened after we gave Lorna the money two nights ago. We have a call in to a private investigator as well.”

We’ve given them an alibi.

The officer reads it, and something in his shoulders seems to release. But it’s not an easing of tension—it’s disappointment.

“As you can see,” my uncle continues, “we didn’t immediately come to the police, because there are stipulations against it”—he points at the letter, the letter I furnished them with—“you can see here it is expressly forbidden. If I’m being honest, our first thought was that Lorna had taken the money and simply disappeared.”

The officer passes the letter to his lieutenants, both of whom readit.

Freddy looks between Marcus and me.

“Wait,” Freddy says to me. “You knew?”

I shake my head no.

“We wanted to keep the situation limited,” my father explains. “And we weren’t sure, we weren’t sure about any of it. It’s very hard to verify a letter like this.”

I see Lorna’s body then, being hauled over the edge of the police boat’s gunwale. Our small con has given cover to a far bigger crime. Whoever killed Lorna is likely to have known her. Isn’t that what they always say about murders? It’s rarely a stranger? Whoever that person is now has an out. I will be called on to testify that there were anonymous bad actors in pursuit of my family.

Only, the bad actor is me.

“Thank you for this,” the officer says, taking possession again of the letter from his two juniors. “We will have to verify it, you understand?”

My uncle nods.

“Please let us know,” Marcus says, “if you find anything additional in the area. We will send out our own divers, but we are eager to recover any of the money Lorna was transporting for us.”

The officer nods, makes a note in his book. “Of course. And we would like to talk to each of you about your alibis for the night Lorna disappeared. Strictly procedure, of course.”

“Whatever you need,” my uncle says.

“And you can understand,” the officer continues, “why we might have come here first, right?”

“Naturally,” my uncle says. “She worked for us.”

The officer shakes his head and pulls something out of his back pocket.

“That is part of it, yes,” he says.

Then he sets the paper down on the table; it’s a clipped article from Il Mattino, Naples’s daily paper. I read the headline: La Morte di Sarah Lingate Ha Riaperto.

I say it aloud: “The Death of Sarah Lingate Has Been Reopened.” It’s identical to the piece in the Financial Times, an AP bulletin.

My father pulls the slip of paper toward him.

“Why?” he says, his voice strained. “Why would you bring this here?”

“You can see that we might think the two crimes are related, no? The case reopened just as your assistant is found dead? It would be quite the coincidence,” the officer says. “We will need you to come to the station this afternoon to identify the body.”

He looks around, expecting several of us to volunteer. My uncle agrees to go.

“And we would appreciate it if you would remain available in the event we need to come back and ask additional questions.”

My father is doing his best to tune them out, to read the article as quickly as he can. He was, I realize, surprised by the news about Lorna, worried by it, even. But this—this stuns him. This small article drains the color from his face. If one of them buried it, it wasn’t him.

He reads it over and over and over again until Marcus finally pulls it away.

“I’ve already told you,” my uncle says, “we weren’t involved. In either event. Sarah’s death was not a crime. And it seems too early to determine if Lorna’s was.”

“Lorna’s what?”

Naomi is standing behind the officers; somehow, I haven’t noticed her progress across the garden. I remember her lying on the couch in the living room in the dark; the thickness of that sleep muffling the way she speaks now, the way she moves.

“Lorna’s death,” my uncle says to her. “A drowning. Such a tragedy.”

A drowning —but the officer never mentioned where she was found.

Naomi sways, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. And then, as if on command, she falls. A soft thud as her body hits the grass, like someone has just dropped a bag of mulch. And in everyone’s efforts to help her—the officers are down on their knees now, Freddy and my uncle, too, I call for the housekeeper—my father pulls the scrap of newspaper from where my uncle dropped it on the ground and reads it again and again and again.