Page 6

Lorna

Hours before Lorna’s disappearance: 35

I used to think the money made you free. And maybe sometimes it does, or it helps you believe you are. But the Lingates aren’t. Even with this garden that stretches to the edge of the Mediterranean, even with these polished terrazzo floors, even with people always waiting to anticipate their needs—they’re not. No one this haunted can ever be free.

Because I feel her here, in this villa. Despite the housekeeper making a big show of welcoming us—kisses on each cheek; a tray of champagne, a sterling silver bowl of nuts, and linen cocktail napkins on the marble table that anchors the foyer—despite the way the Lingates throw back their drinks, despite their laughter, despite how they ignore the whitewash chipping off the walls, I know they can feel her too. How can they not?

But they’re excellent performers. All rich people are.

“This came for you.” The housekeeper passes a package to Helen, the litany of postage across it almost illegible. No one asks the housekeeper’s name, and maybe it doesn’t matter.

“Thank you,” Helen says. I try to catch her eye, but she avoids me. Instead, she turns to her father and asks: “From you?”

“Not from me,” he says, taking the brown box and shaking it gently.

Naomi’s eyes follow every jostle. Naomi, who has said so little since we left Los Angeles.

“Can I show you upstairs?” the housekeeper says to me, putting a hand on the small of my back.

They know the house, she seems to say. You do not.

“Yes.” The thought of a minute alone is nearly erotic.

She leads me up the worn stone stairs and down a hallway to a tall wooden door. She pushes it open. Inside is a simple bed made up with white linens, and an attached bath. A balcony lies beyond a set of French doors. An actual heaven.

“And our bags?” I ask.

“An hour or two. Nothing is fast on Capri.”

She closes the door, and I walk out onto the balcony. The house is flanked by a cluster of canopy pines. A single palm tree tips out over the cliff at the end of the garden. There’s nothing beyond it—the sea, Africa, my future. But only if I play this right.

I step back into the bedroom and sit cross-legged on the bed, pulling my laptop from my carry-on. I shoot off an email to the boat company, requesting a refund, but hold back information about the accident. If they deny it, that will be my response. Negligence. Trauma. Wealthy people being forced to confront mortality. The horror.

The email sent, I open the folder on my computer labeled Taxes and scroll through the countless articles I’ve archived there. The ones I like the best are the scanned, faded newspaper clippings from publications I found on eBay. It’s remarkable, really, what’s available used these days.

There’s something soothing about rereading them. Almost as if I’m reading articles about myself, my own biography. I know most of them by heart, the way the journalists set the scene—a rich family, Capri, a grieving husband—and then the disappointing conclusion: a tragic accident. I chew the edge of my fingernail, my other hand hovering over the next file—an email, not an article—and I hear them laughing downstairs.

When I started working for Marcus, I was curious; it was only normal. There were true-crime podcasts devoted to dissecting the days leading up to Sarah’s death, articles that went up as quickly as the family could pull them down. The tabloids, always. But I had signed an extensive NDA, received my first paycheck (which was more than I had ever made in a two-week span), and decided I would make a real go at a regular life.

Stan changed all of that. Helen did, too.

Helen always avoided the topic. Even after a few drinks, even when we became something resembling real friends, she never mentioned her mother’s death. I never pushed, not once. I liked Helen. I didn’t want it to seem like I was using her. Although I knew people like the Lingates—despite their guilt, their politics—wouldn’t think twice about using someone like me. And Helen was a Lingate.

At the bakery on Twenty-sixth Street, we all knew her. She came in every day, paid in cash, and left a generous tip on her espresso and pastry. One day, I was working the register, just on this side of sober, desperately wishing I could strip off my apron and go two doors down for a drink, when Helen Lingate came in and didn’t have enough cash.

“We accept cards, too,” I said.

Almost no one paid in cash.

“I don’t have any on me,” she said.

I watched her reach for her back pocket, a flush moving across her face and down her neck. All she had was a small leather billfold with her initials on it, embossed in gold. The difference was three dollars.

“That’s fine,” I said, pulling out three ones from the tip jar. “You can pay us back next time.”

“Thank you,” she said.

The way she said it was uncomfortably earnest. I expected her to assume those three dollars were her due. That we owed her because of the number of times she had tipped us double her bill. Instead, when I put her order up, she reached across the counter and grabbed my forearm.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

That was it, our first interaction. The three dollars that led me here. A twelve-step program that had left me more generous than I should be. I was making amends, even though Helen didn’t know it. The next day, she returned with a twenty for the tip jar.

I’d met a lot of rich people over the years, but I liked to believe Helen Lingate was different.

I push the computer away. I only have a few minutes until they expect me to come down. I pull the manila envelope I’ve brought all the way from Marcus’s office in Los Angeles from my carry-on and wedge it under the mattress, far enough in that the housekeeper won’t find it if she changes the sheets. Even if she does, I have a scanned copy. I have fallbacks.

I wish I could change my clothes, shower. But I can’t. Instead, I wash my hands and fluff my hair. I apply the smile I’m known for around the Lingates. The smile that says, Of course that’s possible, Right away, and You can trust me. It’s exhausting, this act, but I can last a few more days.

I pull the door of the bedroom open, and Freddy is skulking in the hallway, waiting.

Irritated, I try to slip past him.

“Lorna—” He reaches for my arm but gets a piece of my dress instead. He holds on. “Wait,” he says.

I don’t have a contingency plan for this.

“I just want to talk,” he says. He drops my dress and lowers his voice. He doesn’t want anyone to hear.

“Aren’t you worried they’re going to wonder where you went?” Isay.

“Lor—”

I have always hated it when anyone other than my mother shortens my first name. But then, Freddy probably doesn’t remember that about me. He was always drunk when he called me Lor anyway. And that was a long time ago. Before he met Helen, before I started working for her uncle. Back when we were on the same circuit. The same houses in the hills, the same drugs. Until four months ago, when we were alone one afternoon and he started calling me Lor again.

“Are we still okay?” he asks. He dabs the back of his hand onto his cheek—there’s no air-conditioning in the villa, just fans, and he’s sweating.

“Of course,” I say, lowering my voice. “We’re fine.” I lean back against the cool wall.

This relieves him. It’s unfair that no one is here to do the same for me—to take the pressure off.

“So we’re going to wait, right?”

“We don’t ever have to tell her,” I say. Because it’s true, we don’t. Sometimes not telling is its own kindness.

“Well…” Freddy starts to say something, then lets it fall away. I watch him muster the courage to try again. “Well, I don’t think this is as bad as some of the other things you’ve done. On the scale, you know.”

I want to laugh, but I’m worried they might hear me. Some of the other things I’ve done. Why do men love to linger on a woman’s bad decisions but find it so easy to absolve themselves of their own?

“Are you trying to say something, Freddy?”

I’m going to make him say it. I’m going to make him fucking say it. But I know he won’t. Freddy just wants to remind me that he was here first. It’s the slightest upper hand. But when it comes to me, who doesn’t have an upper hand? At this point, he can get in line.

“No,” he says, “nothing.” Soothing now, like I’m an animal that might bite when cornered. Because I am. “Just. You know…”

I don’t respond. I stand there, in the hallway, hoping that for once Freddy feels as vulnerable as I always do. Finally, he holds up his soft, manicured hands. His whole body a little looser in places than he might prefer, but then, that’s the thing about money: the padding in your bank account can make up for the padding around your waist. Especially if you’re a man.

“I know I have to tell her,” he says, as if he’s resigned to this thing that will change his life, maybe mine. “But just not this week. We’re on the same page about that, right?”

I hate it, having to be on the same page with Freddy. But I’m out of options.

“Yes,” I say. “Now, don’t you think we should—” I gesture at the stairs, let my impatience out of its cage for a minute, knowing I’ll have to lock it back up around the Lingates.

He nods. I follow him down the stairs, out the kitchen door, and along the garden wall. We pass a door overgrown with ivy, and I think I see movement behind it. Someone shadowing the peephole.

“What is that?” I ask Freddy. He’s been here before. It’s his third trip to the island.

“The guest quarters,” he says. “It’s just a little house. Renata lives there.”

Renata, the caretaker of the villa. The one who was here the day Sarah died. It’s been reported that after the night Sarah died she has refused to see or work for the Lingates.

“Is she there now?”

He shrugs. “Who cares?”

But I don’t like it, the idea that someone might be there, watching us. Watching me.

We keep walking until we reach the main garden. Seeing it sweeps away Renata’s shadow. A manicured lawn, lined with fig and pine trees, dotted with blooming blue lobelias and spiky cacti. It terminates in a terra-cotta patio, shaded by a cypress, overgrown with potted ranunculus, and fenced by a low stone wall, beyond which are the cliffs, the Mediterranean, and the Faraglioni, Capri’s famous fang-like rocks. Somehow, too, there is a pool.

This is why they keep coming back.

The Lingates are arranged around a table covered with a bright floral tablecloth that seems oddly homey. Something from a grandmother’s kitchen, not this villa, not this view. On it are drinks and snacks, a sweating pitcher of water.

“Would you like anything? A glass of wine? An aperitif?”

The housekeeper is behind me, although I haven’t heard her trailing us.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Lorna doesn’t drink,” Freddy says.

I want to say something to him about his own drinking, but I don’t. I don’t because I see the box sitting on the table like a centerpiece. Helen has been waiting for me. For both of us.

Freddy pours himself a glass of champagne and settles between Richard and Naomi. I take the empty seat next to Helen.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Freddy says, pointing to the box as he pushes the champagne bottle back into its ice bucket.

My pulse picks up when Helen’s father passes her a knife off the cheese plate. It’s smudged with something crumbly, but no one seems to want to wait for the housekeeper to bring scissors. It takes some doing, the knife not quite up to the task, but soon Helen is pulling a wooden box from the cardboard one. The wooden box is a nice touch, I think.

“Freddo,” she says, grinning at him.

“Don’t look at me,” he says, wiping a piece of bread through a runny bit of cheese. “It’s not from me. I can’t keep a secret that long.”

“Is there a card?” Marcus asks.

Helen fishes around and pulls out an envelope. Richard’s and Marcus’s names are the only ones listed on the front, and she passes it to her father casually. She’s so convincing that I feel sick. Like she has no idea. Like it wasn’t her plan all along.

“Let’s see what’s inside,” she says, unlatching the clasp and pushing it open.

I see it first because I’m right next to her. A gold collar made up of writhing snakes, their scales and eyes etched into the gold. It used to belong to her mother. On my computer, I have photos of her taken on opening night of one of her plays in New York. Sarah and Richard standing together, glamour and money radiating off them. She’s dressed in a dark blue sheath, not quite navy, the necklace at her throat. She looked like Helen. In fact, so many times I look at Helen and think but for the teeth, the bigger smile, she could be her mother.

“What is it?” Freddy asks.

He pulls the box toward him while Marcus grabs the envelope from a distracted Richard. But Freddy’s motion is too quick. He knocks the box to the ground.

“It’s gorgeous,” Freddy says, picking up the necklace.

He’s oblivious to the way their faces have drained of color, their lips slack. The way Marcus has already folded the note, slipped it into his back pocket. We had hoped for a reaction like this, but witnessing it is a cold shock on a hot summer day. It’s their fear. It feels infectious. I didn’t count on that.

“It’s impossible,” Richard says, standing up and making his way around the table to take the necklace from Freddy. “We looked for it. We looked for it for a week after she died. Every day, we had divers out there.”

I try, again, to catch Helen’s eye, but she’s hypnotized by it: not just the necklace but their reaction. In the moment, the door to the public street feels very far away, the cliffs behind us unbearably steep. The sound of the gentle Mediterranean waves breaking on the rocks below us is impossibly loud, ringing in my ears.

The arrival of the housekeeper cuts through the noise. She’s carrying my lemonade.

“It’s a sick joke,” Marcus says.

As he says it, I watch the glass slip through the housekeeper’s hands and hit the stone, the sound like an egg cracking. It’s just an accident, I think. She doesn’t know. She can’t.

“I’ll help,” I say, getting on my knees.

“No—” She pushes me away. “It’s fine.” She places pieces of broken glass on the tray. “It was just wet.”

“Here—” I hand over a few more shards. Handling the glass is easier than handling whatever is happening at the table.

“Really,” she says, her voice firmer now, “please sit.”

“I can just—”

“No—” She pushes me away again.

“For fuck’s sake, Lorna. Would you sit down? Goddamn it.”

Naomi’s voice is electric. I’m stunned, my hand somewhere between the tray and the stone, my fingers wet.

“I’m sorry,” I say, brushing them against my legs. The smell of sugar and lemon seems to be on me, inescapable.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Helen says, bending down so that she’s whispering to me. “It’s natural to want to help.”

Only, with all of them here, I can’t say the words that are caught at the back of my throat, the words only the housekeeper might understand: Help me.