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36

Haven

Saturday

A nd yet we are terribly, wholly alive.

I read the last line of Holmes’s journal again.

“Oh, my God,” I said aloud. “Oh. My. God.”

With the video paused, I zoomed farther in on the page, spotting a tiny gray-and-white feather stuck in the seam between pages. I wondered about the story behind it. Though, for the moment, I was more riveted by what I’d just learned.

It was Saturday morning, and Mal was still asleep in her bedroom. I stood to go wake her—I couldn’t wait to tell her about this—but I felt so dizzy, I quickly sat back down.

I needed to tell Savina, too. This changed everything she thought she knew about Mari. She shunned her powers over the sea , Savina had said, and look how it turned out for her . Yet given what I’d just read, Mari’s mother had not abandoned her. Her lover had not gone down with his ship. And she herself had not died by suicide.

The misfortunes Savina believed about Mari? Other than losing her little sister, well, those things hadn’t happened at all. If anything, Mari DeLuca suddenly seemed one of the luckiest women to ever have lived.

I jumped at the sound of a knock on the door. Was it Enzo?

I pushed myself off the couch, black spots flashing in my vision. I opened the door.

Conrad.

And by the look on his face, something was wrong.

“How did you find out where I was staying?” I asked, my fingers clutching the door frame.

“Gage told me.” He peered around, taking in the double doors leading to the terrace. “Quite the rental for a project team on a limited budget.”

I ignored him, not willing to waste my breath on an explanation.

“Can I come in?” he asked. “There’s something I’d like to discuss.”

Curiosity got the best of me. I opened the door wider, inviting him to have a seat on one of the bar stools.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Gage and I had a nice chat last night,” he said, running his fingers slowly along the high-top counter. “You’re aware, Haven, of the confidentiality clause surrounding the foundation’s involvement in this project.”

My underarms began to sweat. There was something about his manner that I didn’t like. Something I didn’t like at all.

“Yes, of course.”

“I myself am intimately familiar with it,” he went on, “as I signed the same contract a few days ago. It’s one of their strictest tenets: HPI doesn’t permit funding recipients to disclose their involvement. It’s why Gage requires email encryption and the redaction of the foundation’s name on documents shared with others. You remember signing the contract that agrees to this, right?”

“What are you getting at? I’ve never shared the foundation’s name with anyone outside the project team.”

Conrad pulled out his phone and flicked through a few photos, landing on a video. He pressed Play.

The first thing I recognized in the frame? Enzo’s dive boat. It was footage from earlier that week when Enzo and I had the boatside encounter with Conrad and his crew. I thought he’d been taking pictures with his phone—but instead, he’d been taking a video .

I continued to watch as the camera panned over the waves, the water. Then the frame went still—this must have been when Conrad set his phone on the boat’s center console.

He hadn’t stopped the recording, though. He’d left it on as he began to fiddle with his equipment.

Proprietary. A prototype camera. It was his voice in the video. Clear and sharp.

But it was what I heard next that left a knot in the pit of my stomach. My own voice. Did HPI loan it to you? the video recording played aloud. Or Gage Whitlock himself?

This was followed by a pause I remembered well, even now. Conrad had glared at me after my question, then the video had picked up his under-the-breath comment. Jesus, Haven .

Now, he hit Stop on the recording and crossed his arms. “The foundation’s involvement is to be kept confidential,” Conrad said now. “Yet in this video, you state the name of the organization—and their CEO—in front of several people not involved with the project in any way.”

“Enzo and your boat driver? That’s a stretch. They wear swim trunks to work, Conrad. They’re not interested in foundations and capital commitments.”

He shook his head. “My dive crew isn’t under contract, either. They had no idea this project was funded by HPI. Not until you said something. Now we’re having to sort through NDAs.”

I fumbled for an excuse, anything to exonerate myself. “Well, the contract I signed was null and void the moment Gage yanked me from the project,” I said weakly.

“Wrong. It states that the confidentiality obligations survive even if the parties decide to end their agreement.” He started tapping away at his phone again. “And they’ve got a hell of a team of lawyers back in New York who don’t handle confidentiality breaches with a soft touch. Here,” he said, showing me an obscure business journal article, probably something only a few had ever seen. The headline read Well-Known Foundation Sues Funding Recipient for Breach of Confidentiality Clause . Conrad scrolled down, pointing to the bottom. “Quarter-million bucks in restitution.”

I threw my hands up, exasperated. “Okay, so I screwed up. What now?”

He shrugged. “I can delete the video.”

“Cool. That’s just great. Anything else I can do for you?” My hands shook as I gripped the edge of the counter.

“Yes,” he said. “I want you to leave Positano.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What? Is this a joke?”

“Not at all.” He held up his phone. “You agree to head home, and I delete the video.”

My mouth hung open in disbelief.

Then, finally, I braved the question I’d been scared to ask for days. “How do you know about it?”

He didn’t flinch. “Know about what?”

“Jesus, Conrad. The loot . The gems my father saw on his last dive. I know that’s why you’re really here. Did he tell you about it himself? Or did you sneak around his office, his files, and—”

Suddenly, I stopped.

During our recent boatside encounter, Conrad had used my middle name, calling me Haven Marie . It might have seemed irrelevant, if not for the fact that the password to my father’s cloud folder—the very one holding the images of the wreck—was my middle name.

Every so often, my father shared images of his dives with friends and family. Conrad must have snooped around on the cloud drive. “You figured out his password,” I said now. It wouldn’t have been very difficult to determine via my social media, or maybe my father had once mentioned it in passing. “You managed a way into the locked Li Galli Potential folder, didn’t you?”

Conrad wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Your dad shared plenty with me,” he said. “He would have told me about it over beers, anyway.”

I vehemently disagreed. “Let me guess,” I said. “Your search is going well, but you need more time. You want me out of your way, don’t you?” I didn’t have the extravagant tech equipment Conrad boasted, but perhaps he feared I had other clues at my disposal—like information on the strange alphanumerical codes my dad had also left in the cloud folder.

Conrad didn’t answer. Which told me all I needed to know.

Still—he wanted me to give up my father’s discovery.

And he wanted me to leave .

Yet now more than ever, I needed to be here. There was something only I could take care of, something with huge implications.

I thought about what I’d read a few minutes ago in Holmes’s log— And yet we are terribly, wholly alive —and Savina’s erroneous beliefs. She thought Mari had drowned herself after a lifetime of personal loss. She also thought she and Renata were the last of the streghe . But if Mari and Holmes had lived, they could have gone on to have children. They could, for all I knew, have left a thriving line of descendants. If so, Savina needed to know this. She might not be the last of them.

Nothing was guaranteed, though. Staying in Positano to pursue this could be a dead end. And if that were the case, I’d have accomplished nothing in exchange for what could be a pretty little lawsuit.

“I need to talk to Mal,” I said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

I nudged Mal on the shoulder, waking her.

“Hey,” I said. “I need help. It’s about Conrad.”

She blinked her eyes open, sat upright. “Are we burying a body?”

I didn’t laugh. Instead, I summarized what I’d read in Holmes’s journal, then my conversation with Conrad. “I don’t know what to do. He wants me to leave Positano.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “How can I abandon this whole thing? Learning the truth about Mari, uncovering what my dad begged me to find…”

From Mal’s stern expression, I could tell she was about to dive into one of her tough-love lectures. “Look, Haven,” she said, her voice low. “This isn’t about your dad anymore. I get that you’re grieving him. I get that you’re full of remorse. I get that you’re trying to finish what he started.” She stood and placed a hand on my shoulder. “But he’s gone, Haven. And right now, everything that’s at stake—not the least of which is the safety of the people on the water—means you need to let go of the search for your dad’s gems—right now, anyway—and worry about the Something Bigger.” She shook her head. “Think of it this way. If not for the journey to find his sunken treasure, you wouldn’t have gone to the archive at all. You wouldn’t have met Enzo, or his mother. You wouldn’t know anything about the streghe .”

She touched the worn, faded bracelet on my wrist. “Look at this thing. It’s ratty and old and perfectly you. You, Haven, don’t give a shit about money. Neither did your dad. He wanted to use the proceeds to start a scholarship fund, for God’s sake. Conrad has always been about the yachts, the glitz. But you’ve told me yourself, your dad cared most for the joy of the discovery: the pursuit, the adventure, the deep dives with people you love. These are the things he wanted for you. And you’ve already made a hell of a discovery, haven’t you?” She swiped away a tear that had slipped down my cheek. “You’re a grown woman. You get to make your own decisions. You’re allowed to do something different than what your dad asked of you.”

She was so terribly, painfully right. For now, at least, I needed to stop worrying about the gems. I needed to get to the bottom of Mari and Holmes’s story.

“Yeah,” I finally said. “You’re right.”

“Well, obviously.”

I shook my head at her—this blunt, wildly loyal best friend of mine—and left the room. I found Conrad still at the kitchen counter, eyes glued to the television. It was another news report about the nosedive in Amalfi tourism.

“All right, Conrad,” I said. “I’ll stay off the water, but I’m not leaving town.” I nodded to his cell phone. “Do whatever the hell you want with that video.”

He thrust his phone into his back pocket. “I don’t get you, Haven. A lawsuit like this could ruin you.”

I shrugged, making my way to the front door, then I opened it for him. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

At this, he frowned, and I basked for a moment in the satisfaction of it. Perhaps he thought I was on the trail of an even bigger pile of treasure. An even bigger, more valuable discovery.

Which in many ways, I was.

“Leave,” I said, holding the door open.

With a slight nod, he slipped out of the house.

***

Given what I’d read in Holmes’s log before Conrad’s arrival, I was tempted to make my way to Savina’s villa right then and there. But I still had questions, and I knew Savina would, too.

The log itself and the leather-bound case were both water-damaged. I’d assumed they were flotsam, since so much else in the archive room had been marked as such. But the journal couldn’t be flotsam, not if Holmes had made an entry after the sinking, recording that he and Mari were both alive.

How, then, had this journal made it to the archive? And might it shed light on Holmes’s and Mari’s eventual fates? This seemed crucial information before I went back to Savina with what would otherwise seem a preposterous tale.

I flipped through my phone’s photos again, looking at an unusual stamp affixed to the bundle holding the log and its leather case: FM-1842.1 . I hadn’t any idea what this meant, and the only way to find out was to call Chloe—not exactly my favorite person. It was Saturday, but according to the archive’s website, they were open this weekend for a special teaching event with university students.

Chloe answered on the third ring. After exchanging quick hellos, I asked her about the code on the journal.

“FM,” she repeated. “Anything with that stamp means it came from the private collection that maintained the Fratelli Mazza company records until the early 1900s. Eventually, they donated those records to us. There were hundreds of boxes. The number 1842 indicates the year the private collection would have come into possession of the journal. And the 1 simply means they only had one record for that year. Which is logical, as the Fratelli Mazza business was all but defunct by late 1821.”

This took me by surprise. “Why is that?” I asked.

Chloe let out a little laugh. “Well, the brothers were both dead. Massimo drowned in April of that year, and then two weeks later, Matteo was aboard a brig that sunk very near Positano. Their deaths, so close together, were all the city talked about for a year. We have dozens of old newspaper articles about the brothers if you’re interested.”

I paused. April of 1821 was the month of Holmes’s final entry. “I wonder why the archive didn’t get this journal for another twenty years, then.”

“Could be any number of reasons,” Chloe said. “The author of the journal might have sent it to the archive himself, believing its contents were historically significant. Or, after the author’s death, his family might have mailed it to the archive, knowing there was mention of the Mazza brothers within.”

I thought of my father, his home office still brimming with old dive logs, scattered Post-it Notes, and scribbled annotations on ship diagrams. I hadn’t yet mustered the strength to review any of it in detail.

What would I do with it all someday? I wouldn’t be able to throw his things away. Perhaps Holmes’s family or children—if he had them—had felt the same, opting to send this personal document to an archival collection instead, where it would be forever preserved.

“Do you have any resources,” I asked now, “that might shed light on the fate of the journal’s author? Death records, for instance?”

“We subscribe to two genealogy databases, yes.”

I thanked Chloe and hung up the phone.

A trip back to the archives was in order.

***

The next morning, Mal and I woke at the crack of dawn to take a taxi into Naples, a quicker trip than the bus. We arrived at the archive soon after it opened.

Before looking at the genealogy resources, I wanted to take a final look at Holmes’s journal itself, to ensure I hadn’t missed anything.

“I’d like to see the same document I viewed last time,” I told Chloe. “No need to assist. I know where it is.”

She pushed forward the clipboard with the visitors’ log, and I scribbled my name. Mal did the same, then together, we went to the last archive room. I still had the shelf number written in my notebook, and I quickly located the bundle containing the water-damaged case and log. Together, Mal and I sat down at a small table.

For all the time I’d spent reviewing Holmes’s log on my phone in recent days, it held significantly more meaning now, here in my hands. When I’d first held this journal, I’d chalked Holmes up to little more than another unfortunate drowned sailor. And perhaps even a criminal.

But now, I knew he was a man who’d fallen in love with a witch of the sea. A man who’d been determined to return to her.

A sailor who hadn’t gone down at all.

I checked the journal for any overlooked clues that might shed light on how it had gotten into the archive’s hands in 1842, nearly twenty years after the Mazza brothers were dead.

I could find nothing.

Frustrated, I gave the log and its water-damaged case a final look, then I patted it softly and placed it back in the paper bundle. I sensed, instinctively, that I would never see it again. It had given me everything it could.

“So we’re done?” Mal asked. “I could go for a Bellini.”

I shook my head. “No. This log isn’t why we’re here.”

Mal raised her eyebrows. “Yay.”

I chuckled as we made our way back to the entrance.

“Chloe,” I said, “can you tell me about your genealogy databases?”

“Certainly,” she said. “We subscribe to two. Il Portale Antenati and FamilySearch.org.” She reached for a small card, handing it to me. “Feel free to use one of the computers in the back. Here is our log-in information.”

A few minutes later, Mal and I scrolled through Il Portale Antenati, but it proved frustrating: the site was difficult to navigate and didn’t return any records dated pre-1860.

We tried FamilySearch.org next.

“Let’s try Holmes Foster ,” I said, typing his name into the search function. I left the dates wide-open.

“What about location?” Mal asked.

I tried Massachusetts first, remembering what I’d read in his log. Nothing matched the time frame. I trilled my fingers on the desk. He wouldn’t have stayed in Positano, that much I knew. “Should I just put… Italy ?” I gave a little laugh at the absurdity of it.

“Can’t hurt to try.”

I typed this in and hit Enter. Again, no results. “Okay. Let’s try Mari DeLuca ,” I said. But again, nothing.

I leaned back in my chair, letting out a long exhale. Suddenly, Mal leaned across me, all but shoving me out of the way to access the keyboard. Mari Foster , she typed.

“That won’t work,” I disputed. “Italian women don’t take their husband’s surnames.”

Mal glared at me. “They ran away after faking their deaths. Mari doesn’t exactly sound like a rule-follower.” Then, very dramatically, she hit Enter.

At once, a single result popped up on the screen. But it wasn’t related to someone named Mari Foster; instead, it was a post made on a forum several years earlier. The user had posted the same message twice, once in English and once in Italian, stating that she was looking for an ancestor by the name of Mari who might have been involved with someone bearing the last name Foster. The time frame that this ancestor lived was early nineteenth century, with possible connections to Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

It seemed deliciously promising.

“You’re welcome,” Mal said, smirking.

My pulse quickened as I clicked on the profile of the woman who’d made the post. Her name was Lucille Detti, and she’d uploaded a photo, though she looked like countless other Italian women: olive skin, dark eyes. Interestingly, though, she had dark red hair, interspersed with gray. She was very beautiful, maybe midfifties. According to the profile, she lived in Venice.

Her profile listed an email address. I quickly sent her a message, asking her to call me regarding a Mari/Foster she’d posted about online two years ago.

It wasn’t an answer to Holmes’s fate, but perhaps it would shed light on Mari’s.

“Now we wait,” I told Mal. “Let’s go find your Bellini.”

***

Several hours later, as Mal and I were in a taxi returning to Positano, my phone rang with an unknown number and a +39 country code. I picked it up at once, sensing this might be Lucille.

I was right.

“You’re the only person who has ever reached out about that post,” she said, a delighted warmth in her voice. “I’ve been compiling my family’s tree for many years, and Mari is one of the few places where I’ve found myself… bloccata .”

She was at a dead end, then. I resisted the urge to start firing questions. What, if anything, did she know about Mari and Holmes? Was she familiar with stregheria ? Was she, herself, a practicing strega ?

Instead, I forced myself to start with pleasantries. I asked whether she still lived in Venice, which she did, and whether she had a family. She’d been married thirty-four years, she told me, and she and her husband had two grown daughters. Four grandchildren, as well: one boy, three girls.

“How interesting.” I took a breath, steeling myself. “And what do you know about your ancestor, Mari?”

“Not much,” Lucille said, voice resigned. “Have you ever tried researching your family tree? There are an infinite number of paths to take. If I can’t make progress on one ancestor, I’ll hop over a generation and work on someone else.” In the background, I heard her sifting through papers. “Before I called you, I pulled a few files. Mari had four children. They took the surname Foster , which is interesting. Probably from their father, yet the surname is not Italian, of course. I never learned much about him. The parish registry records only referred to him as Signor Foster .”

I stayed silent, feeling the need to keep Holmes’s survival story to myself, at least for now.

“The cholera pandemic, which ravaged much of Europe in the 1840s, is what eventually killed Mari. Likely her husband, too. The parish registry shows that the family of six was living in Treviso in 1841, but there are no records for 1842. I would assume that if Mari’s husband—this Foster man—had survived, he’d have remained at home with any surviving children.”

Chloe’s suggestion, then, had been correct: someone, whether Holmes or Mari or another person, must have sent Holmes’s log—stamped FM-1842.1 —to the archive shortly after the time of his death.

I looked out the window as the taxi sped down the freeway. In the distance, Mount Vesuvius rose high and clear into the sky.

Lucille went on, “Most likely a neighbor or friend of the family took the children in. Those children are my ancestors. I’ve traced a few of them, particularly one of Mari’s daughters. Long family lines. I’ve got cousins all over the world. Thousands, I think.” At this, Lucille laughed. “I’ve connected with a few of them. Made some good friends, really.”

“Would you mind sending me pictures of the family tree?” I asked, remembering what Savina had told me. A legacy stretching back thousands of years, and we are the last of it.

“Of course,” she said. “Once we hang up, I’ll send the photos to you by email.” I heard Lucille shuffling through papers. “I’m terribly curious myself. What is the reason for your interest in all of this?”

I explained to Lucille that I was an archaeologist researching a family whose lineage placed them in the Amalfi region. As I said this, Mal eyed me warily as though to say, That is grossly short of detail, but okay .

The answer seemed to satisfy Lucille, and I got the sense she was glad that someone, at last, had reached out. “Before we hang up…” I said, leaning forward in my seat. Here we go. “During my research, I stumbled on an old article mentioning stregheria . I’m curious if your family has passed down any stories or legends around it?”

“ Stregheria …” Lucille repeated, her tone aghast.

“Right.”

“I am n-not—” She fumbled over her words, then went silent. I wondered, briefly, if the line had gone dead. “I am not comfortable speaking about this over the phone,” she finally said.

“I understand,” I said quickly, wanting to put her at ease. Still, I’d caught the tremor in her voice. There’d been something there, something she hadn’t wanted to share. Perhaps she would be more comfortable speaking with Savina if I could tactfully make the connection.

I thanked Lucille for her time and told her I’d be waiting for her email.

We hung up, and I checked my missed text messages—a few hellos from friends back home. Then I went to Instagram, curious if Conrad had posted any photos of today’s dive.

I felt sick when I saw that he had. Once-in-a-lifetime dive , he’d captioned on a photo of himself pulling off his dive mask. With a pang of unease, I could only hope that my afternoon at the archive, and my conversation with Lucille, would make all of this worth it.

“Are you okay with a quick errand before we go back to the villa?” I asked Mal.

“Have I any choice in the matter?”

I laughed. “Touché.”

I leaned forward and gave our taxi driver instructions.