Page 32

Helen

Now

“It’s me.”

Ciro.

I don’t intend to tell him, but the weight of my father’s words is too much. So I do. I’m surprised to discover that my confession makes me feel better. After all, is there anything left to hurt me now? When the worst has already happened? The idea is so liberating, I feel dizzy. Maybe none of it matters—Lorna, my mother, our failed blackmail, my own unfaithfulness to Freddy. Is this what they feel, my family? This drug?

“Where is he now?” Ciro asks.

When he asks, I’m flooded with the sensation that maybe I should protect him. The same way he’s protected me from the truth all these years. It’s awful, but I feel closer to him now. Tied to him. As if by telling me, he shackled us together, when all I’ve ever wanted is to escape them all.

“I left him out there,” I say, looking over my shoulder. I almost add that I hope he jumps. Or falls. But before Ciro can take a step toward the cliff, I say: “Let’s go. I don’t want to see him. Can we go to your place?”

Nothing sounds better in that moment than being with Ciro. Hidden from my father, my family. Ciro nods and we start walking, side by side; my hand slips into his so easily, so comfortably, that I don’t even notice it until he’s pulling it free to open the back entrance to his mother’s house. Renata’s house has two doors: one that leads into the garden of the villa and another that opens onto an overgrown alley, not even a side street, that snakes away from the back of the house.

It’s dark now. The tall stone walls and cypresses that ring Renata’s casita further blot out any ambient light from the restaurants and houses and boats, where aperitivo is already in full swing.

“Mamma,” Ciro calls.

We can hear her, in the kitchen. Something rattles on the stove, a cupboard closes. I follow behind Ciro, our hands again intertwined. It’s strange that in this house I can be so close to them—my family, just next door—but feel a world away. Renata’s living room is whitewashed and shares the same terrazzo floors as the villa. But in lieu of the intricate mosaic tiles and the hand-painted frescoes, all the tile work here is painted in the same dark blue, the tables rough-hewn wood, not marble, the couches hand-me-downs from the villa.

Renata wipes her hands on her apron when we enter and kisses us both.

“What a nice surprise,” she says.

I haven’t seen her yet this trip, when normally she’s my first stop. And I feel guilty that in my moment of need, I still expect her to be available to me. Or if not to me, at least to Ciro. What, I wonder, must it be like to have a parent who is available like this?

“You don’t mind if Helen joins you for dinner, do you?”

I look at Ciro. He hasn’t mentioned leaving. Our hands are still clasped. I consider what would happen if I simply refused to let go.

“I have to help a friend from Naples,” he says to me. Then he pulls away and holds up his hand, where the gash is still healing. “I couldn’t finish the job after this. But it’s better now. I promised him earlier.”

He holds it out, palm up, for me to inspect.

See. Healed.

But I remember what it looked like the morning after Lorna disappeared. Everything, it seems, can heal. Enough, at least, that the injury isn’t as visible.

I hear my father’s voice: I killed your mother.

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” he says. “You can stay as long as you need to.”

“Do you mind?” I ask Renata.

“Of course not,” she says. “I’ll make us something. Go. Sit outside.”

Her garden is small and private. The entire space a profusion of green: ivy climbing the stacked stone walls, a junior stone pine, figs and lemons. Some of the plantings so thick they seem ancient, others decidedly new. It’s easy, here, to imagine my family isn’t within arm’s reach, but they are. I wonder how she manages it during the week we are here.

“You like him, don’t you?” Renata asks.

She sets a tray of spritzes, potato chips, and olives between the two of us. A little votive offering to the gods of Capri.

“Yes,” I say. It feels good to finally say it out loud.

She doesn’t say anything. Just tips her glass in my direction. And after I’ve taken a sip to steady my nerves, I turn toward her and ask: “Can you tell me what happened that night?”

She swirls her drink and watches the condensation run down the side of the glass.

“I already gave a statement to the police.” She pulls an olive from the bowl that separates us.

I’ve never asked her this. It’s always been unspoken that we won’t talk about that night. That she can’t. Through all the dinners I’ve had with her and Ciro, through the childhood spent playing in this garden, sitting around this table, I’ve respected the way she walled herself off. Maybe I never wanted to know.

“He told me he did it,” I say, my tone flat.

I watch her and she doesn’t even flinch. She knew. Of course she did.

“But that’s all he said,” I say. “I was hoping you might—”

Renata stands and disappears into her small kitchen. I hear the stove fan and the rattle of the coffee canister. Then the Moka being rinsed, reassembled. She comes back out with little glass cups and a pitcher of water. Even though it is dark, the daytime heat clings to the island, and her table feels sticky, the chairs, too.

“You matter very much to me, Helen,” she says, and takes a breath. “I liked your mother. She wasn’t like them. Since she has been gone, I have tried to look after you the way she would want you to be looked after. But I worry about how they have responded to everything this summer. To the necklace, to the death of the girl.”

“Lorna,” I supply.

She nods.

“I have to focus on taking care of the villa,” she says. “Not the people who occupy it. Not if I want to survive.”

It’s a cruel distinction. But after what happened to my mother, to Lorna, I understand. Lorna once said to me, I don’t think about the rich as individuals, but as a category. After all, that’s how they think of us. It didn’t offend me. I knew she was right.

Renata pours us water and lets her attention wander to where the coffee is boiling on the stove.

“You were there every day,” I push. She must have seen them—my family—up close over the years. She must have seen their mess, their physical mess, the dirty underwear and stained wineglasses, along with their big fights and petty backstabs.

She holds her hands up, closes her eyes.

“Basta.”

Enough. Knock it off.

But I’ve seen photos of Renata when she was younger. She’s always a fixture in the background. As permanent as the columns, the Islamic tile. A prim apron wrapped around her waist, hands clasped behind her back. There’s one photo of her and my mother, arm in arm by the pool, wearing matching smiles. I see more of Ciro in those earlier photos of her than I see in her now. It must be hard for her that he looks so much like his father. At least, that’s what I assume. I’ve never met him. I don’t think Ciro has, either.

“I don’t think they stopped with my mother,” I say quietly.

“That family,” she says, and now she looks at me. “They are corrosive.”

I think of Saltwater. Of the gradual disintegration of the siblings, their fortune and fortunes. On this very island, maybe. And I know she’s right. I’m living proof of it.

“So help me,” I say. If it sounds like I’m begging, I’m fine with that.

“I wasn’t there that night,” she says.

“But you know more than you told the police.”

She doesn’t dispute the accusation. “I didn’t want to get involved with the investigation. My version of events wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Not with a family like that. But I thought—I still think—they never should have come to the island that week. That even when they arrived, something seemed rotten. But not just between your parents, with all of them. Every conversation was like a knife”—she runs a finger up her arm—“running against the skin.”

It could be, I realize, a description of this week.

“That is why you won’t get near them,” I say.

“Partly.”

She takes a sip of water.

“They lie,” she says. “To each other. To you. And they never get caught.” She fishes a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. I’ve never seen Renata smoke. “No matter what they do, they never get caught.”

“It can be different this time,” I say. Even though I’m not sure I believe it. Not yet.

“They don’t realize it,” she says. “But jealousy and greed make people weak.” Then she lights the cigarette and claps her hands. “I’m sorry,” she says. Renata reaches across the space that separates us and squeezes my arm. “They are your family. I don’t want to talk about them like this. Because in the end, you will still love them.”

She looks like she genuinely regrets it, these words that have somehow escaped her good judgment. What she doesn’t realize is that I’m desperate to talk to someone who sees them for what they are. Even more, for what they are becoming in my imagination—the transition from claustrophobic and controlling to monstrous so seamless I can’t even locate the moment when the shift occurred.

But if Lorna were here, I’m certain she could.

—

The next morning, I wake in Ciro’s bed. I didn’t mean to sleep here. I meant to slip back into the villa. But I waited for Ciro. Ciro, who came home late. Ciro, who knew about Lorna before I did.

I’ve been so preoccupied with Lorna’s disappearance and my father’s confession that I haven’t put all the pieces together: that Ciro knew about the money, that he knew what Lorna looked like, that he knew where she was supposed to meet the boat.

I trace a finger down Ciro’s hand where the cut has been healing. I’m bad at seeing things that are close to me—Lorna, my father, Alma. Perhaps I’ve been bad at seeing Ciro, too.

“You can stay with me,” Ciro says. “You don’t ever have to go back.”

He sits up in bed and puts a hand on my shoulder. I only allow myself a sidelong glance at him. Over the years, I’ve watched his face go from the soft optimism of a child to the hollowed practicality of an adult. But he’s summoned all the optimism left in himself for me, and I want to throw myself into it, borrow it as my own. To let it save me from the mess I’ve half made, half inherited.

“I have to,” I say, pulling back the bedsheets. “Especially now.”

We both know it’s the truth.

My father told me, I know, because despite his admission of guilt, I need him. I need them. I need the money. He told me because I had no other choice but to share his burden. Every minute I don’t turn him in pulls me deeper into the fold. Because even at their worst moments, the Lingates don’t turn on blood. They turn on people like my mother, like Lorna, Ciro, even Naomi. The ones who aren’t Lingate by birth. He’s counting on that.

“Will going back put you at risk?” Ciro asks.

He’s trying to find a reason to keep me away from them. Maybe in another world, we could shuttle back and forth between Capri and Naples. It would be simpler, but it would be ours. And if it weren’t for Lorna, for my mother, I might say yes.

I am drowning and Ciro is offering me a lifeline, but I can’t take it. Not yet.

“He wouldn’t have told me if he didn’t think he could control the situation,” I say. Then: “I’m safe with them.”

I’m surprised to discover I believe it.

“We don’t always know people as well as we think,” Ciro says. He says it slowly, as if it might take me a minute to fully grasp the meaning of what he’s saying. But he’s wrong. I know them.

“Do you think he ever loved her?” I ask. I mean my mother. “How can someone who loves you do something like that?”

“We are always both people,” Ciro says. He runs a finger down my back, like the idea is painful. “The person who loves and the person who does terrible things.”

We are always both people.

And before I can think about how this applies to my father, Ciro says: “You are also both people.”

I can hear it. The accusation there. It’s gentle, but I know he’s right.

“You are the Helen I know and a different Helen for them. You have to be. But to love you means that I love both of you.”

For the first time since seeing my father on the Salto, I can feel my skin prickling with panic, a flush running up from my chest to my neck and face. It’s unfair what I’ve done to Ciro. We both know it. I always thought I would make it up to him. If only I could get the money, get free. But then, he never cared about all that. I did.

“But neither of me has killed someone,” I say.

Ciro shrugs like the distinction doesn’t matter.

“We all do bad things,” he says.

“You don’t.”

It’s true. As far as I know.

“I love a woman who is with someone else,” he says. “I put her needs ahead of my own. I keep secrets for her. I will continue to keep secrets for her. Those are bad things.”

I wonder what else he has done for me.

“I can’t turn him in,” I say.

We are always both people.

I can’t turn him in yet. My mother’s death was always academic. She was here, and then she was gone. My mother had always been an idea to me, an ideal. Not a flesh-and-blood person who was with me as I grew up. I was haunted by her, never comforted. But Lorna is different. Lorna’s death, what Lorna was doing, for herself, forme—Iknow I can’t let them go another thirty years without consequences.

“Would you still love me,” I ask, “if I did something that bad? If I could never go home?”

I’m afraid to ask this question, but then, even as I do, I know what the answer will be. Ciro is not two people, Ciro is only one person. I hope Ciro is only one person.

“Of course,” he says.

—

I slip out of bed and through the garden, padding into the villa’s kitchen and up the stairs. When I reach our bedroom, Freddy is still tangled in the sheets. It’s not yet midday, but he stirs and says:

“Did you have fun?”

“What?” I say.

“Your dad said you ran into some friends from school. Was the dinner fun?”

I look up at the ceiling of our bedroom, and I can see the thinnest crack where the white paint has separated with moisture and time and age. And I think: It will be a very, very long time before I have fun again.

“Yes,” I say, “so much fun.”

“I hope you left some in the tank,” he says, “because your uncle said we have to go to that party tonight. On the private island?”

“Gallo Lungo?” I say.

“Yes.”

Gallo Lungo is even smaller than Capri—inaccessible except by private boat or helicopter. Even harder, my uncle knows, to escape.