Page 38

Marcus

July 19, 1992

Capri

Richard was already asleep when Marcus made the decision not to change. It would be better, he thought, if someone saw him walking around in wrinkled linen shorts and a button-up shirt, a pair of leather loafers. No one on the island would look twice.

Downstairs, he checked on Naomi, who was still asleep on the couch. He tried again to wake her. Pushed on her shoulder. Tickled her ear. No response.

Marcus knew he hadn’t been the best husband. Throughout their marriage, he rarely concerned himself with traditions like fidelity. But on nights like this, he was deeply grateful for the woman Naomi was. He leaned down to kiss the top of her head before turning off the lights and leaving her, asleep, in the dark.

The plan was simple, really. All he had to do was take Sarah’s jewelry and leave. Richard had told him where the body was: not far from the viewing platform, resting on a bed of pine needles. Round trip, it would take less than an hour. And the jewelry? That, he would throw into the sea below. If anyone ever found it, by then the connection would be forgotten. And if not, the body would be cremated and any physical evidence destroyed.

No one would ever know for sure what happened that night. Perhaps the thieves had developed cold feet. Murder, after all, was a more significant crime than stealing a necklace, a handful of rings. He tried to remember if Sarah had been wearing earrings that evening but couldn’t.

Once he was on the street, it became clear Capri was still awake. There were groups, sometimes as large as eight or ten people, stumbling home from late dinners, others just heading out. Maybe on the way back, he thought, he would stop off for a drink, to have an alibi in the event something went wrong. All he needed to do was muddy the waters.

A little doubt, his father always said, goes a long way.

But as he swung around the corner, taking the road that led to the Villa Jovis, he saw her in the shadows. A hand against the wall, as if she were steadying herself, or walking by feel. Her steps surprisingly assured, even and measured. Her movement almost liquid in the red column dress she was wearing. He wondered, briefly, if she was drunk. Maybe Richard had been, too. Maybe his story had been wrong—a drunken mistake. Maybe it wasn’t true that Richard had pushed her. Maybe—

Marcus watched Sarah take her free hand and touch the back of her head gingerly. A barely perceptible flinch followed.

His mouth went dry. He cleared his throat. He was about to say her name when she saw him and stilled. Her whole body, he realized, coiled to run. But he acted first. Putting a firm hand on her wrist as soon as he reached her. Marcus knew if she weren’t injured, she would have beaten him. She would be gone.

“What happened?” he asked. “Are you okay?” He tried to concentrate on his grip. To make it consistent but not alarming. He needed to be able to keep her there. But if she started to struggle, started to scream, he knew he would lose her. They still had to walk a half mile back to the house and cross at least one busy street.

“I—” She started to speak, but it was clear that despite being upright and mobile, she was injured. She looked around the narrow alley; they were alone. “I don’t know what happened.”

This was good, Marcus thought. He could work with I don’t know.

“Let’s get you home,” he said, pulling her off the wall and ensuring that all her weight rested on him. “Tell me what you remember.”

“I don’t know,” she repeated.

But he noticed the way she looked at him when she let go of the wall. He felt her sudden, instinctual stiffening. Sarah. Oh, Sarah . She had always been a problem. Too smart for Richard. Too independent. Despite her insistence, Marcus didn’t believe her. He knew her. Had known her in a way her husband couldn’t.

“Okay,” he said, turning her down another narrow alleyway. “Let’s take this route home. It will be faster.”

It would also, he knew, be quieter.

Sarah looked wistfully at the main pedestrian street that would skirt them along the bustling Via Camerelle, but she didn’t protest, whether out of exhaustion or injury or trust, he wasn’t sure. Even so, they couldn’t move quickly through the dark alleys of Capri. It was impossible. Sarah’s steps were halting. It was a delicate balance, a dance between reaching the privacy of the villa and doing so in a way that would not look coercive to a passerby. Or to her.

Just as Marcus was feeling confident this route had been the correct one, he heard them. A group, speaking in English, of course, with thick British accents, making their way up the pedestrian street. When they rounded the corner—six of them—he felt Sarah freeze.

“I told you it was impossible not to think about her that way—” one of the men in the group said, his words slurring together.

“Ah, sorry, mate.” Another attempted to slide past Sarah and him, but the street was narrow and they were almost at an impasse.

“Wait,” Sarah said, her hand reaching out to grab one of their shirts. “Help me.”

Her voice was strong and clear, and the group, despite their drunken banter, stopped. They looked between Marcus and Sarah. Marcus could feel them evaluating the scene—her dress, his clothes, the way she slumped against him. Marcus wondered if they could see the trickle of blood meandering down her neck through her long hair.

“Is there a problem?” one of them asked. But he was unsteady on his feet, almost swaying.

“Help me,” Sarah repeated.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus said, “my sister-in-law fell this evening and hit her head. I’m just trying to get her home. She needs help.”

Marcus could feel Sarah leaning harder against him. Richard might not have killed her, but she was getting weaker. Perhaps it was only adrenaline and desperation that had helped her make it this far. But now, with the possibility of help here, she was losing her ability to stand.

It would be impossible, he knew, to take on all six of them if they decided to intervene. That would be it. Not just for him, but for the entire Lingate family. They stood in a tense silence, and Marcus could feel them assessing: Sarah, nearly comatose, him in tasseled Tod’s loafers, them late for the bar. Then he watched them note the wedding rings they were both wearing, Sarah’s necklace.

“Do you need help getting her home?” one of them finally asked.

Sarah started to speak, but Marcus intervened. “No, that’s okay. I’ve called a private doctor. He’s waiting for us at the house.”

Again, another rough patch of silence. Until one of them, one at the back of the group, his voice too loud, spoke up and said, “Good luck with her, then!”

They moved on, the laughter echoing off the stone walls. The weight of Sarah’s body fell against him.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

“I don’t want to go with you.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

Even though she couldn’t hold herself up, Sarah tried to wrest herself free. She pushed against Marcus with one hand and tried to leverage her body away with the other. She struggled so much that Marcus had to grab her by the wrists and say:

“Stop it. Stop it, okay? We need to get home. We need to get home and then we can figure out what to do, okay?”

“You already know what you’re going to do,” she said, her voice almost hoarse. “You won’t let him take the fall for this. You won’t let it happen to the family. So why not do it right now? Do it here. Don’t make me go anywhere with you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sarah. You’re hurt. You don’t remember what happened. We just need to get you home and get you better.”

But even as he said it, he knew she was right. He did know what he had to do. “Come on. Just one foot in front of the other.”

But her body went limp.

“No,” she cried. “I won’t. I won’t go with you.” Then she cried out, into the night, “Help! Help! Aiuto! Per favore! ” Marcus clapped a hand over her mouth and tried to hoist her up off the ground where she had fallen, her dress a puddle of red around her legs.

“Shut up,” he whispered. But the only thing that called back to them was the steady thump of a club track from the Marina Piccola. “Just shut up. If you won’t walk, I’ll carry you.”

He looped an arm under her legs and around her back. She was heavier than he thought she would be. But then, it was probably because she refused to help, her body loose and weighing him down. He had let go of her mouth to pick her up, but now, instead of yelling, she was looking around frantically, at every door and every intersection, to see if there were strangers she might enlist. Although they could hear them, on the next street over, on the decks of yachts, on the balconies of the villas, they never ran into anyone.

By the time they were almost to the house, Sarah had started to say, over and over again:

“You don’t have to, Marcus. You don’t have to.”

And then, just as they were nearing the gate, she said something that brought him up short.

“I haven’t told anyone. If that’s what you’re worried about. I haven’t told anyone and I never will.”

“What do you mean?”

“About Helen,” she said, her body now coming to life. “I haven’t told anyone about Helen. You know I don’t want to do that. So if that’s what you’re worried about—”

They had never talked about it. But it was always there. A land mine that every year became more deeply buried, its ultimate explosion more devastating. He almost couldn’t bear to hear her talk about it. And despite his ability to push through the unpleasant, often violent decisions in life, this one caught him off guard.

His daughter.

“I’m not worried about that,” he finally said. “I’m not.”

But as he said it, he realized he was trying to convince himself of it as much as he was her.

“I would never tell, Marcus, I would never tell,” Sarah repeated, almost like an incantation, a prayer.

Before he could reach for the gate, it swung in on its own. Waiting for them, between the columns that flanked the entrance, under the dark canopy of stone pines, was Naomi.

Marcus couldn’t be sure how much of their conversation she had heard. The gate to the garden was inches thick, but seeing her there made the impossible situation Richard had put them in even more clear.

“You have to help me with her,” he said, pushing past his wife and bypassing the house. “You have to help me fix this.”

“No!” Sarah said, her voice now a higher pitch as she tried to squirm free of his arms. “No! Richard! Renata!”

Just as Marcus was about to drop her, to free an arm so that he could cover her mouth, Naomi did it for him.

“Shut up,” she whispered. “Just shut up.”