Page 8

Lorna

Hours before Lorna’s disappearance: 29

We go to Da Paolino for dinner. The lemon boughs are thick on the trellises, looming over the tables. I suspect the lemons are fake until I reach up and touch one—its skin is soft and fragrant. It’s the first time I’ve smelled something other than fig or pine since we arrived on the island. There are white lanterns and yellow tablecloths and I even consider enjoying it—this island, this life—then I remember none of it is mine.

Before we left the villa, Marcus and Richard closed themselves in the library to discuss how they might handle Helen’s unfortunate gift. Richard confirmed its authenticity, flipping the necklace over, finding the hallmarks, growing pale as soon as he saw them. Marcus made a handful of calls. Through the closed door came urgent, muffled words. The envelope left on the sideboard, limp, soaked through by splashes of wine.

I know their concern will be eased by the extensive Lingate resources. Resources that can resolve this temporary diversion, the same way they have everything else related to Sarah’s death.

Money. The great fixer.

Helen refused to give up the necklace when they insisted. The package wasn’t addressed to you, she pointed out. It was a nice flourish, a way to keep the thing front and center, a reminder. I admire the move. She improvises well, better than most rich people I know. But then, Helen isn’t rich. They are. That’s the whole problem.

—

I met Helen for a hike at Runyon Canyon because it was one of the few places they allowed her to go. The fog was still thick against the hillside when she arrived, pulling a black, nondescript ball cap down on her head and looping her hair through the back. She started walking without me. I had to jog to catch up.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.

Helen always seemed to be apologizing. To the point where it felt like a reflex.

“You don’t need to apologize,” I said. “I can wait ten minutes.”

We had been meeting like this every week. Helen, it turned out, had no other friends. She only had Freddy. A setup by Naomi. And even he seemed like a plant, like an extension of her family. Knowing Freddy, he probably was.

Every day she went from her father’s house to the bakery, to her painting studio, and back. She had a driver. There were no stops in between. I suspected they turned a blind eye to her spending more time with me because I had already signed an NDA. I was a managed risk.

But the risk they hadn’t managed was Helen. At first, she only asked casually if there was anything at her uncle’s office about her mother. The question felt curious, not like an interrogation. We’d known each other for almost a year and a half, she had begun to trustme.

“Not about her death,” she added quickly. “Just about—her.”

“I haven’t looked,” I said.

It was a lie. There were dozens of files on Sarah. Someone, probably Marcus, had saved copies of every play, every scrap of correspondence that turned up following her death. There were reviews of her work, college transcripts, financial statements. There was nothing, though, about her death.

“If you find anything—” she said. Then: “They won’t talk about her.”

I started slipping her photocopied pages a week later. I knew what it was like to have a parent you didn’t know. The way it could feel like you didn’t know yourself because you didn’t know them. Five days ago, I had slipped her a copy of the file labeled Sarah—Financial.

As soon as we were alone on the road, she said, “I called our attorney today.”

I didn’t press. My not pressing was part of the deal. She was on an allowance. She couldn’t drive, couldn’t work. She wasn’t allowed a world outside the family. She couldn’t even talk. Not really. Not to anyone. All of it had been curdling in the decade since she left college. Since she began to realize what a shit hand she had been dealt. They had been different before her mother died, she said. Or at least she heard they were. She had been too young then to know.

It had all come out in dribs and drabs in the three years we’d been friends.

“Oh?” It was all I said.

She nodded, the movement tight and small. She looked around us, but it was impossible to see more than ten feet in the fog. “I asked him about my mother’s trust.”

Helen never talked about the family’s financial picture. I only ever saw the statements that came in for Marcus and Naomi, the numbers comically long.

“And he paused,” she continued. “He told me: ‘Your father is the trustee of that account. I’ll need his permission to discuss it.’ But I’m the beneficiary. I have rights. I told him that.”

She looked at me from under her baseball hat, and I could see it then, the way her face was twisted with anger.

“He told me it was true. That she set up a trust for me early in their marriage. All of her creative proceeds went there, into a handful of investments. She was doing okay for herself before she met my dad. She really was. She didn’t need him.” Her almond eyes were narrow, her lips thin.

She was jealous. I got it.

“The attorney finally sent me the statement history. He had no choice. I knew my rights. And, Lorna, there was money in it. Almost two million.”

Next to me, she kept a grueling pace. As if we were trying to outrun someone.

“She left me a fucking trust. A lifeline. Do you know how badly I needed that a decade ago? I might have…” She didn’t finish. Both of us knew what a ticket out looked like. It looked like two million dollars.

She shook her head. “It’s gone now.”

“What do you mean?”

I hadn’t banked on this: the twist. I’d thought of it as a favor, passing her those papers. See, something has been set aside. They’re just keeping it from you. Maybe I had hoped I might get a finder’s fee.

“Richard was the named trustee until I turned thirty. Then I was to be made trustee and sole beneficiary.”

Helen was already thirty-three. And she sometimes called her father Richard. It was strange and impersonal. The same way my mother made me call her Lori, never Mom. It makes you seem more grown up, she used to tell me. That, and it supported her lie when she told people she didn’t have a child.

“But he liquidated it. All of it. While I was still in school. He never provided a single accounting statement, nothing. He shirked every fiscal responsibility he had to me. The attorney helped him hide it. Fucking Bud. He’s been on the payroll for so long, he’d do anything for them. And then, after our call, Bud sent me an indemnity agreement insulating my father and his firm. He wanted me to promise I wouldn’t sue for malfeasance!”

She was almost yelling. I always knew she was as angry as me. Even if she didn’t.

“They’ve never let me work. Too much potential for exposure, my father says. But do you know what I could have done with that money? I could have rented an apartment. I could have paid for school. I could have hired my own attorney. There could have been restraining orders. Distance. Instead, I’ve been too afraid to do anything except play the good girl for decades. Too afraid that I might upset them. Bring unwanted attention. Because after all, they’re my family. Don’t I owe them that? And they love me, right? They want what’s best for me?”

“That hasn’t been my experience with family,” I said, my voice low. Helen knew about my childhood, the way my mother stole it from me. I didn’t like to talk about it, but I told Helen because I thought it would knit us together. It did. It has.

“It hasn’t been mine either,” Helen said, her voice back under control. “But I never imagined that they would take away something that belonged to me. I always thought the point was that I had nothing. That I would get it eventually. That I was dependent. ” She paused and then laughed. “But that was never true.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I already signed the fucking papers,” she said. “What was I going to do? Sue my own father?”

“Some children would.”

“It would only get worse.”

She was probably right. I’d seen the way Marcus dealt with enemies in the office. He piled on lawyers and gag orders and damages until his opponent was entirely underwater. I doubted they would resist doing the same to their own if they felt there was a risk of scandal.

“So what now?” I asked.

She pulled down the brim of her hat and focused on the ground in front of her. We had transitioned to dirt, and the rocks crunched under our feet.

“I want to get out, Lorna. I want to get out. But I need to get out with something.”

I knew exactly what she meant.