Page 40

Helen

Now

We are at sea. Lurching halfway between Capri and Li Galli, the small archipelago of rocks that are thrown, like a handful of scattered seeds, between the shores of Capri and Positano. The atmosphere on the boat—full of friends and acquaintances, and even a few enemies, of Werner Leipling—is buoyant.

By the time I reached the villa, word of the fetal DNA testing had already circulated, courtesy of the family lawyer, who had visited while Naomi and I were shopping. There was no match. The samples given thirty years ago were too degraded to test. Bud Smidge, who had been no less aggressive in protesting the family’s innocence when my mother died, declared the new information a de facto exoneration. When we left for Li Galli, the phone was still glued to his ear.

No charges for Lorna’s murder would be brought against a Lingate. At least for now. Bud had already moved on to the reopening of my mother’s case. Something he assured my father was simply a stunt. A matter of politics he intended to clean up quickly. For a fee.

There was no sign of the carabinieri when we left the house as a group. I hung back a few steps from my father, my uncle, and Naomi to watch them. They moved together in a tight cluster. That was their power, of course—their cohesion. To the point that sometimes it seemed impossible to see where the Lingate ended and the individual began.

I’m going to help them rediscover those boundaries.

They’ll do it to themselves, and I’ll keep my hands clean. They won’t think it was me. They’ll think it was Lorna or my mother who brought it to the surface. Once I’ve pried them apart, they’ll only remember the why, not the how.

It has to be like this because I still need them. I still need their money. Lorna would understand.

We hit chop during the crossing, and Naomi’s hand falters, tipping a spray of white wine into the breeze. She has wrapped one of the scarves we bought earlier around her neck, the pink slash against her pale skin almost violent. The captain of our boat—a sleek wooden thing sent by Werner to ferry guests from the Marina Piccola to Gallo Lungo—points out the dock where we will be pulling in. There is only one place to come ashore here, and the island, like Capri, is defined by its vertiginous cliffs and ancient history. Gallo Lungo is more rugged than Capri, rougher, drier somehow. It’s said that Li Galli were where the Sirens lived, perching themselves on the rocks and luring sailors to their deaths.

It’s easy to imagine.

Marcus says something to the captain about how he hasn’t been here in years. Not since the previous owner let it fall into disrepair. Then he cracks open a bottle of Peroni, sips it, surveys the rocky coastline and the house, illuminated, at the tip of the island. A Roman road switchbacks up the sheer rock face. It’s a miniature version of the road that has been closed on Capri for years due to rockfall. Too dangerous, even for the Italians.

My father is dressed in white linen pants and holds an empty glass of champagne, his hand pressing the base of the flute against the bench of the boat. Ever since we boarded, his eyes have been trained on the outline of Li Galli.

Bud’s presence has been like a balm. I noticed it the day after my father confessed. The lawyer’s counsel is so soothing, despite the mounting pressure, that it has allowed my father to pretend nothing has changed. As if he never said those things to me on the Salto . As if this were thirty years ago and he can already see the same outcome.

He watches the edge of the island, the cliff. He’s eager, it seems, for this evening’s staging of Stravinsky’s Capriccio, which Werner has promised will feature Massine’s original choreography. I doubt he would be so enthusiastic if he knew what Naomi had told me, but it’s better for me if he doesn’t know. Not yet.

We join a queue of boats waiting to unload their passengers, and I see Stan on a slick gray tender two boats back. He lifts a hand to me just as we are deposited onshore. On the dock there is a shaking out of dresses and slacks, a smoothing of hair back into place, a twisting of enormous rings. Finally, oversize golf carts arrive, each designed to ferry a dozen guests to the main house and amphitheater, where the evening’s performance will take place.

Since we left the villa, I have been thinking about the blocking, the staging, of my own family drama. Lorna used to say that the worst thing about money was that it made people feel invincible. But that was also the best thing about money. It was a weakness, she liked to point out, all their bluster and ego. The confidence that comes with this, with thinking it will never go wrong, never falls away.

I can’t help it, I think of Freddy, of how much he would have loved this scene. The way the carts jostle as we work our way up the ancient cobblestone road. I can see him telling the story to a friend years later: A private island, the most boring ballet I’ve ever seen, but the view—

Other people, I’m sure, will tell this story in his absence. In fact, I’m counting on it.

After ten minutes, the golf cart arrives at the house. It’s white, like our villa, and lavishly decorated with blue tile. A long table is laid out on a patio that seems to be suspended in midair above the Mediterranean. But dinner will come later, after the ballet. No one eats before eleven in the summer anyway.

The guests spill out into the garden, sweeping glasses of champagne and bespoke cocktails off trays, while I hang back, wait for Stan. Naomi quickly takes and downs a Negroni. Her limit doesn’t seem to exist. Although I’d like to see her reach it.

I watch my uncle—my father —greet acquaintances, clapping them on the back and laughing. And for the first time, I study the way his cheek dimples, the way his jaw cuts, and I see myself in him. Not in the abstract way one sees oneself in family, but in the deep, bone-sure way one can trace the presence of their parents in themselves. It makes me wonder what else I’ve been blind to.

Stan’s golf cart approaches the house, and a waiter discreetly offers hors d’oeuvres. I pass. I’ll eat later, when it’s done. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Renata talking to one of the waiters.

“Who is that?” my father asks. His eyes have followed mine and won’t leave Renata. “She looks so familiar,” he says. And then, it’s as if a current of electricity goes through him—the shock of recognition. “I haven’t seen her in decades,” he says.

Stan is helped off the golf cart, his slightly expanded waist cinched in with an alligator belt, the buckle so bright it twinkles. I want to talk to him alone, but my father is still standing next to me. He shakes his head, takes two steps toward Renata, and pauses.

The garden is crowded, but I watch as she realizes it’s him, and after all these years, a scrim falls across her face. Here, on this small rock in the Mediterranean, his past and her present have collided. It seems impossible, but then, there are only so many property owners in a place like Capri, only so many possible guests for a night like this.

“I’ve always wondered…,” my father says. Then he stops. “It’s like seeing a ghost.”

He turns his attention away from Renata and locks eyes on someone he knows. After my mother died, my family folded in on itself. Worried always, I suppose, that the truth would come out. But judging by the guests Werner has assembled here—the women in Missoni, the men in Loro Piana—it’s hard to imagine any of them caring if my father did kill my mother. It happens, they might say. I’m sure he had his reasons.

Or: She was never one of us anyway.

A tray of drinks passes by, and I lift off a Campari spritz. It matches my dress, a bright red poppy, which flows out into a full skirt. The eyes of the snakes that encircle my neck glow. It’s almost upsetting, really, how easy it is to look normal when you feel anything but.

“God, you look so much like her.”

Stan has come up behind me.

“And in that dress—”

I look down and remember, although perhaps I always knew it, that the dress my mother was wearing the night she died was red, too.

He passes me an envelope. In it is my copy of Saltwater.

Break them up, Lorna would whisper to me if she were here.

A bell sounds from across the garden, and our host begins the process of ushering his guests toward the amphitheater, which faces the Italian peninsula and the Gulf of Salerno. The view is so sweeping and distracting it seems unfair to the dancers waiting in the wings. I doubt Stan thought about the ballet when he decided to come tonight. I think he just wanted to see me perform.

I look back at Capri, where the Villa Jovis stands—a sentry at the eastern tip of the island—and I can’t help but think of the stories about the emperor who gave his name to those ruins. That he kept a harem of young boys. That he routinely threw discarded lovers from the cliffs. That he hosted lavish parties where all his guests dressed as Roman gods. That he beat people to death on a whim, for fun. Because he was bored.

Wasn’t it always because they were bored? The ballets. The performances. The affairs. The cheating. The obsessing. The drinking. The drugs. The parties. The fights. The shopping. The lounging. The killing. Not much, I know, has changed on the island in thousands of years.

My father lingers at the edge of the garden, letting the other guests pass by while he waits for my uncle to finish a conversation with a woman whose arms are so lined with gold bangles they run nearly to her elbows. I walk up to him and press the envelope into his hands.

“Have you read this?” I ask.

He pulls out the sheaf of papers and looks at the title page.

“Where did you get this?” he says.

He looks around us like an answer might be close by, but Stan is already seated, waiting for the ballet to begin. Marcus isn’t paying attention.

“Have you?” I ask, my voice calm even though my heart is racing.

Because if he has read it, he knows. He knows that Marcus is my father. He knows and he has kept it from me. But if he doesn’t know, if Naomi is right and my father didn’t kill my mother, that leaves only Marcus with a motive. And maybe he had the same motive for killing Lorna, too.

“Yes,” he says. “She showed it to me once, years ago.” He fans through the pages and pauses in the middle, reads a sentence, maybe two. And he asks me again: “Where did you get this?”

“From Lorna,” I say.

“This is—” He begins to read through the pages frantically, skimming them, folding them back on themselves. “It’s not what you think, Helen.”

In the distance, the music starts.